Abstract

Work and the family are very important areas for human life that have an impact on mental health. The study of the relationship between work and family has a long history and has focused on examining the conflict that occurs in two ways: first, when work interferes with the family and, secondly, when the family interferes with work. It is relevant to study the work-family or family-work conflict (hereinafter WFC) because the abundant previous research indicates the existence of serious consequences at the personal, family and organizational level. In the area of mental health, consequences such as depressive symptoms, exhaustion and distress stand out. The aim of the article was to analyze the evidence published from 2015 to 2019 regarding work-family conflict and its relationship with mental health indicators. This framework is carried out bearing in mind that the COVID-19 pandemic represents a particular and extraordinary context that, although it has generated work and family changes through confinement, we have decided to leave it out of the search to investigate the phenomenon leaving aside this contextual variable. A systematic review of the descriptive and mixed approach literature was carried out. The review began with qualitative techniques where subcategories were established from pre-established variables with which the information of the selected literature was collected. Subsequently, a synthesis of the distribution of subcategories was made using quantitative techniques. The combination of terms “work- family conflict” and “mental health” in both English and Spanish was tracked in the Web of Science topic search engine and in the Scopus and Scielo abstract. The entire abstract of the identified texts was read through non-repeated databases, and the inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied to select the articles to be read in full. The inclusion criteria were: empirical studies published in category “articles” that refer to the work-family conflict and mental health indicators; published between 2015 and 2019; articles in English and Spanish; published in journals indexed in WoS, Scopus or Scielo. The exclusion criteria were: theoretical articles, systematic reviews, meta-analyses and essays; articles whose abstract does not mention “work-family conflict” as a variable; articles whose abstract does not mention mental health indicators as a variable; theses, memoirs or other studies that are not considered articles. 188 articles were identified in the databases, 38 duplicates, the abstracts of 150 articles were read to apply the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 74 were selected for the thematic synthesis in 13 categories. The results indicate that most of the studies approach the WFC phenomenon using quantitative methodology and conceptualize WFC as role incompatibility; Secondly, there are the studies that conceptualize it as an imbalance in interactions and thirdly those that conceptualize it as a chronic stressor. The main objectives mentioned in the studies are to analyze the relationship between the family and mental health issues where the first is considered an independent variable in relation to the second and study factors that influence the family work conflict; thirdly, there are those who study family and personal consequences of the WFC. Sociodemographic characteristics are the main risk factor for the presence of WFC and its main consequences in mental health are burnout, distrés and depressive symptoms. A major challenge for Latin American research on work-family conflict is the conduct of mixed mass studies in the context of re-entry after confinement due to the COVID-19 pandemic.