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Background Ethical climate in the workplace has been highlighted to have an important impact on workers' mental health; the evaluation of workplace ethics and its impact on workers' health should be considered an occupational health issue. Aims The present study aims to investigate ethical climate as perceived by workers, and its correlation with mental health outcomes, in particular, symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress. Methods A cross-sectional study was performed by administering an online survey, investigating socio-demographic variables, workplace ethics (through the Italian short version of the Corporate Ethical Virtues questionnaire) and mental health outcomes (using the short version of the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale). Descriptive analyses, analyses of variance and regression models were performed; P -values were considered significant for values ≤0.05. Results The sample included 176 workers; the mean age of participants was 46.22 years and 44% were males. The most represented job sector was health care (37%), and 42% of participants had college-level education. Ethical climate was significantly correlated with all mental health outcomes investigated in the study: anxiety (P  ≤ 0.001), depression (P  ≤ 0.05) and stress (P  ≤ 0.05). Conclusions Results from this study highlighted a significant correlation between workplace ethical climate and depression, anxiety and stress. This study underlines the importance of evaluating and improving ethical climate to prevent the onset of psychological distress in workers. Furthermore, results from this study should be a starting point for future research investigating the role of ethics and mental health in employees' turnover intention and job satisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Unemployment impacts people's physical and psychological well-being, and gender and age affect mental health among the unemployed. Despite the correlation between unemployment and negative mental health outcomes being largely investigated in scientific literature, research on voluntarily unemployed individuals is scarce. A systematic review was performed on studies evaluating mental health outcomes in voluntarily unemployed adults., Methods: Following the PRISMA statements, three databases were screened; research articles written in English investigating the relationship between mental health outcomes and employment status were included. The quality of articles was assessed using the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale., Results: The initial search yielded 727 records; 4 studies were included in this systematic review. One study reported voluntarily unemployed people as less depressed than employed and unemployed people, one as more depressed than employed but less than unemployed people, one reported voluntarily unemployed people as less anxious but more depressed than employed and less anxious and depressed than unemployed people, one study reported voluntarily unemployed men as depressed and anxious more often than employed men. Further research should investigate mental health outcomes in voluntarily unemployed people and strategies to bring back these individuals into the workforce.

Objective: Workplace ethics is a central theme in occupational health; an ethical climate aims to implement and uphold standards of integrity and fairness. Furthermore, the correlation between ethical climate and burnout has been highlighted in several studies, and the impact of a negative ethical climate in the workplace has been reported to affect workers' mental health and job performances, resulting in increased burnout incidence. The aim of this systematic review is to assess the relationship between ethical climate and burnout in the workplace., Method: This review was conducted following the PRISMA statements. Three databases were screened, including research articles written in the English language during the last 10 years, investigating the relationship between burnout and ethics in the workplace. The quality of articles was assessed with the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale., Results: 1153 records were found across three databases; after duplicate removal and screening for title and abstract, 46 manuscripts were screened by full text, resulting in 13 included studies. The majority of the included studies were performed on healthcare workers (n=7, 53.8%), and with a majority of female participants (n=9, 69.2%). Most of the included studies (n=9, 69.2%) evaluated the correlation between ethical climate and burnout, while the other four (n=4, 30.8%) evaluated ethical leadership. Four studies reported a positive correlation between ethics and work engagement. Two studies highlighted that an ethical workplace climate reduced turnover intention., Conclusions: Ethical climate plays an important role in burnout mitigation in workers and in improving work engagement, thus helping to reduce turnover intentions. Since all of these variables have been reported to be present in clusters of workers, these aforementioned factors could impact entire workplace organizations and their improvement could lead to a better work environment overall, in addition to improving the single factors considered. Further studies are needed to investigate the role of ethical climate in the workplace., Competing Interests: Competing interests: None., (© 2023 Giovanni Fioriti Editore s.r.l.)