Role stress-mental health relations in Japanese bank workers: A moderating effect of social support

The relationship between role stress at work and mental health status, and the moderating effect of social support, were examined in a sample of Japanese bank workers. Hierarchical moderated multiple regression analyses revealed that role overload had the largest association with mental health status and its interaction with co-worker support was also significantly associated with mental health status. Visual inspection indicated that this interaction should be regarded as a convergent relationship; i.e. high co-worker support would be effective to keep mental health status at low to medium levels of role overload, but become less effective at a higher level of role overload. This relationship was replicated for male clerks. but varied for female clerks, and was not significant for male chief clerks or higher. This might suggest that contradictions in the moderating effects of social support reported in earlier literature from Western countries could, at least in part, be explained by differences in the types of stress, strain, and social support, as well as the situational context of the samples.