Employees who hold on to their jobs following enforced redundancies are nearly as likely to require treatment for stress as workers who loose their jobs, a study finds.

University College London researchers studied prescription data on 26,500 municipal workers in Finland between 1994 and 2000.

The prescriptions were confined to psychotropic drugs such as antidepressants, anti-anxiety drugs and sleeping pills.

Almost 5,000 people worked in 'downsized' workplaces, but kept their jobs in 1993 when the redundancies occurred.

Just over 4,000 lost or left their jobs during the downsizing, while a further 17,600 worked in unaffected units.

The researchers found that men made redundant or who left during downsizing were 64 per cent more likely than those in completely unaffected organisations to receive a prescription for a psychotropic drug.

But men who kept their jobs in downsized organisations were almost 50 per cent more likely to be given a prescription for one of these drugs than those in completely unaffected workplaces.

Women were about 12 per cent more likely to use a psychotropic drug after downsizing.

According to the study, men were more likely to receive sleeping pills, while women were more often prescribed anti-anxiety drugs.

"The increased chances of a prescription for a psychotropic drug after downsizing represents a great burden, not only on the individual, but also on society," the researchers said in their report.

"Our findings imply that work conditions should increasingly be recognised in large scale preventive strategies for psychiatric disorders."

The study findings are published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.