Associations between interactional justice, supervisors’ support, and depressive symptoms among primary care nursing workers: a cross-sectional study in Brazil

Background High prevalence of depressive symptoms among primary care workers has been pointed out in previous studies. However, the relationship of leadership aspects and the mental health of nursing workers in Primary Health Care (PHC) has been overlooked. We aimed to estimate the prevalence of depressive symptoms among nursing workers and to investigate the associations between interactional justice, supervisor support, and depressive symptoms among nurses and nursing-assistants in PHC. Methods we conducted a cross-sectional study, with a representative sample of professionals from the Family Health Strategy (FHS) in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. Sixty-six UBS were randomly selected, including 351 teams and 953 nursing professionals (306 nurses and 647 technicians). The Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) was used to assess, with scores ≥ 10 being classified as probable major depression. We used the Brazilian version of the Organizational Justice Perception Scale to assess interactional justice and the Job Stress Scale to address support from supervisor. The associations between sociodemographic variables, stressful life events, work characteristics, and depressive symptoms were analyzed using Poisson regression with robust variance. Results The prevalence of probable major depression was 25.6%. The variables associated with the risk of probable major depression were being women, having reported low interactional justice (prevalence ratio = 1.53), and low supervisor support (prevalence ration = 1.96). Conclusion Reporting low interactional justice and receiving insufficient support from supervisors might jeopardize nursing workers’ mental health. Leadership training could be a strategy to mitigate depressive symptoms among PHC nursing.