Exploring mental health from the perspective of DNA methylation: evidence from the hospitality employees

ABSTRACT Awareness of work-related stress or mental health has been increasing in global tourism, but there has often been a dilemma to deal with it properly. In this paper, we adopted the allostatic load model and differential susceptibility model to conduct an interdisciplinary study. Study 1 collected longitudinal data and adopted a latent class growth analysis to identify two major growth trajectories of mental health: escalating class and normative class. Study 2 showed that significant DNA methylation (>10%) occurred at some loci of the target genes (NR3C1, FKBP5, NGFR, DRD3, and SLC6A4). The DNA methylation level of the escalating class was higher than the normative class in FKBP5, SLC6A4, and NGFR, which could be recognized as susceptibility genes of hotel employees in the stressful working environment. This study illustrated the potential of psychobiology in solving the mental health issues of hotel employees theoretically and practically.