Exploring exposure to multiple psychosocial work factors: prospective associations with depression and sickness absence.

BACKGROUND: Most studies on the psychosocial working environment have focused on evaluating the isolated effect of individual psychosocial work factors or looked at effects through a lens of theories such as job strain or effort-reward imbalance. However, to fathom the intricate nature of workers' experience of occupational strain, there is a need to investigate the combined and cumulative effects of multiple exposures to psychosocial work factors on workers' health. METHODS: In this prospective cohort study, we created an additive index (range 0-4) on number of baseline exposures to quantitative demands, emotional demands, role conflicts, and workplace bullying. Via logistic regression and Cox regression, we estimated the association between the additive index of psychosocial work factors and depressive disorder and long-term sickness absence (LTSA). We assessed the onset of depressive disorder using the Major Depression Inventory at 6-month follow-up and the onset of LTSA using a national register during 12-month follow-up. RESULTS: For onset of depressive disorder, high exposure to any one [odds ratio (OR) 2.98], two (OR 3.14), three (OR 6.44) and all four (OR 9.62) adverse psychosocial work factors predicted a statistically significant increased risk. For onset of LTSA, high exposure to any one [hazard ratio (HR) 1.13], two (HR 1.67), three (HR 2.31) and all four (HR 4.04) psychosocial work factors predicted an increased risk. The two latter associations were statistically significant. Trend tests indicated an exposure-response relationship for both outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: Workers reporting exposure to multiple adverse psychosocial work factors had a higher risk of developing depressive disorder and LTSA.

Work stress and loss of years lived without chronic disease: an 18-year follow-up of 1.5 million employees in Denmark.

We aimed to examine the association between exposure to work stress and chronic disease incidence and loss of chronic disease-free life years in the Danish workforce. The study population included 1,592,491 employees, aged 30-59 in 2000 and without prevalent chronic diseases. We assessed work stress as the combination of job strain and effort-reward imbalance using job exposure matrices. We used Cox regressions to estimate risk of incident hospital-diagnoses or death of chronic diseases (i.e., type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, stroke, cancer, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, heart failure, and dementia) during 18 years of follow-up and calculated corresponding chronic disease-free life expectancy from age 30 to age 75. Individuals working in occupations with high prevalence of work stress had a higher risk of incident chronic disease compared to those in occupations with low prevalence of work stress (women: HR 1.04 (95% CI 1.02-1.05), men: HR 1.12 (95% CI 1.11-1.14)). The corresponding loss in chronic disease-free life expectancy was 0.25 (95% CI - 0.10 to 0.60) and 0.84 (95% CI 0.56-1.11) years in women and men, respectively. Additional adjustment for health behaviours attenuated these associations among men. We conclude that men working in high-stress occupations have a small loss of years lived without chronic disease compared to men working in low-stress occupations. This finding appeared to be partially attributable to harmful health behaviours. In women, high work stress indicated a very small and statistically non-significant loss of years lived without chronic disease.

Psychosocial working conditions and sickness absence among younger employees in Denmark: a register-based cohort study using job exposure matrices.

OBJECTIVE: Previous literature has established associations between psychosocial working conditions and sickness absence (SA), but only few studies have examined associations among younger employees. This study aimed to investigate associations between psychosocial working conditions and SA among employees, aged 15-30 years, who entered the labor market in Denmark between 2010 and 2018. METHOD: We followed 301 185 younger employees in registers for on average 2.6 years. Using job exposure matrices, we assessed job insecurity, quantitative demands, decision authority, job strain, emotional demands, and work-related physical violence. Adjusted rate ratios of SA spells of any length were estimated for women and men separately with Poisson models. RESULTS: Among women, employment in occupations with high quantitative demands, low decision authority, high job strain, high emotional demands, or high work-related physical violence was associated with higher rates of SA. Being employed in occupations with high versus low emotional demands showed the strongest association with SA, with a rate ratio of 1.44 [95% confidence interval (CI) 1.41-1.47]. Among men, being employed in occupations with low decision authority showed the strongest association with SA (1.34, 95% CI 1.31-1.37), whereas occupations with high quantitative demands, high job strain, and high emotional demands were associated with lower rates of SA. CONCLUSION: We found that several psychosocial working conditions were associated with SA spells of any length. Associations with SA spells of any length resemble associations with long-term SA, suggesting that results from previous studies on long-term SA may be generalizable to all lengths of SA among younger employees.

Association of alcohol use with years lived without major chronic diseases: A multicohort study from the IPD-Work consortium and UK Biobank.

Background: Heavy alcohol consumption increases the risk of several chronic diseases. In this multicohort study, we estimated the number of life-years without major chronic diseases according to different characteristics of alcohol use. Methods: In primary analysis, we pooled individual-level data from up to 129,942 adults across 12 cohort studies with baseline data collection on alcohol consumption, drinking patterns, and history between 1986 and 2005 (the IPD-Work Consortium). Self-reported alcohol consumption was categorised according to UK guidelines - non-drinking (never or former drinkers); moderate consumption (1-14 units); heavy consumption (>14 units per week). We further subdivided moderate and heavy drinkers by binge drinking pattern (alcohol-induced loss of consciousness). In addition, we assessed problem drinking using linked data on hospitalisations due to alcohol abuse or poisoning. Follow-up for chronic diseases for all participants included incident type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, stroke, cancer, and respiratory disease (asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) as ascertained via linkage to national morbidity and mortality registries, repeated medical examinations, and/or self-report. We estimated years lived without any of these diseases between 40 and 75 years of age according to sex and characteristics of alcohol use. We repeated the main analyses using data from 427,621 participants in the UK Biobank cohort study. Findings: During 1·73 million person-years at risk, 22,676 participants in IPD-Work cohorts developed at least one chronic condition. From age 40 to 75 years, never-drinkers [men: 29·3 (95%CI 27·9-30·8) years, women 29·8 (29·2-30·4) years)] and moderate drinkers with no binge drinking habit [men 28·7 (28·4-29·0) years, women 29·6 (29·4-29·7) years] had the longest disease-free life span. A much shorter disease-free life span was apparent in participants who experienced alcohol poisoning [men 23·4 (20·9-26·0) years, women 24·0 (21·4-26·5) years] and those with self-reported heavy overall consumption and binge drinking [men: 26·0 (25·3-26·8), women 27·5 (26·4-28·5) years]. The pattern of results for alcohol poisoning and self-reported alcohol consumption was similar in UK Biobank. In IPD-Work and UK Biobank, differences in disease-free years between self-reported moderate drinkers and heavy drinkers were 1·5 years or less. Interpretation: Individuals with alcohol poisonings or heavy self-reported overall consumption combined with a binge drinking habit have a marked 3- to 6-year loss in healthy longevity. Differences in disease-free life between categories of self-reported weekly alcohol consumption were smaller. Funding: Medical Research Council, National Institute on Aging, NordForsk, Academy of Finland, Finnish Work Environment Fund.

Interrelationships between job demands, low back pain and depression: A four-way decomposition analysis of direct and indirect effects of job demands through mediation and/or interaction.

BACKGROUND: Psychosocial work stressors may lead to low back pain (LBP) through depressive symptoms or to depression through LBP. Depressive symptoms or LBP may also modify these associations. METHODS: We examined prospective interrelationships between job demands, LBP and depressive symptoms. We used comparable data from three consecutive biennial surveys in 2010-2016, from the Swedish Longitudinal Occupational Survey of Health (SLOSH) and the Work Environment and Health in Denmark (WEHD) cohorts, broadly representative of the working populations in Sweden and Denmark. We conducted multivariate counterfactual based mediation analyses allowing for four-way decomposition of the total effect of job demands, on incident LBP (N=2813, 2701) and incident major depression (N=3707, 5496). The four components estimated direct and indirect effects through mediation and/or interaction. RESULTS: We observed no association between job demands and incident LBP four years later, but job demands was associated with later major depression (relative risks=1.88, 95% confidence interval=1.45-2.31 in SLOSH and 1.64, 1.18-2.11 in WEHD, adjusted for age, sex, panel (SLOSH data), education, cohabitation, physically strenuous work and chronic diseases. About 37% of the association was attributed to interaction between job demands and LBP in SLOSH. No interaction was found in WEHD. LBP partly mediated the relationship, by 14% in SLOSH and 2%, while statistically insignificant in WEHD. LIMITATIONS: Possible limitations include lack of comparable data on disabling low back pain, different scales for depressive symptoms, misclassification and residual confounding. CONCLUSIONS: This suggests mainly a direct effect of job demands on major depression, or through other pathways than LBP.

Long working hours and risk of 50 health conditions and mortality outcomes: a multicohort study in four European countries.

BACKGROUND: Studies on the association between long working hours and health have captured only a narrow range of outcomes (mainly cardiometabolic diseases and depression) and no outcome-wide studies on this topic are available. To achieve wider scope of potential harm, we examined long working hours as a risk factor for a wide range of disease and mortality endpoints. METHODS: The data of this multicohort study were from two population cohorts from Finland (primary analysis, n=59 599) and nine cohorts (replication analysis, n=44 262) from Sweden, Denmark, and the UK, all part of the Individual-participant Meta-analysis in Working Populations (IPD-Work) consortium. Baseline-assessed long working hours (≥55 hours per week) were compared to standard working hours (35-40 h). Outcome measures with follow-up until age 65 years were 46 diseases that required hospital treatment or continuous pharmacotherapy, all-cause, and three cause-specific mortality endpoints, ascertained via linkage to national health and mortality registers. FINDINGS: 2747 (4·6%) participants in the primary cohorts and 3027 (6·8%) in the replication cohorts worked long hours. After adjustment for age, sex, and socioeconomic status, working long hours was associated with increased risk of cardiovascular death (hazard ratio 1·68; 95% confidence interval 1·08-2·61 in primary analysis and 1·52; 0·90-2·58 in replication analysis), infections (1·37; 1·13-1·67 and 1·45; 1·13-1·87), diabetes (1·18; 1·01-1·38 and 1·41; 0·98-2·02), injuries (1·22; 1·00-1·50 and 1·18; 0·98-1·18) and musculoskeletal disorders (1·15; 1·06-1·26 and 1·13; 1·00-1·27). Working long hours was not associated with all-cause mortality. INTERPRETATION: Follow-up of 50 health outcomes in four European countries suggests that working long hours is associated with an elevated risk of early cardiovascular death and hospital-treated infections before age 65. Associations, albeit weak, were also observed with diabetes, musculoskeletal disorders and injuries. In these data working long hours was not related to elevated overall mortality. FUNDING: NordForsk, the Medical Research Council, the National Institute on Aging, the Wellcome Trust, Academy of Finland, and Finnish Work Environment Fund.

Onset of workplace sexual harassment and subsequent depressive symptoms and incident depressive disorder in the Danish workforce.

BACKGROUND: We studied onset of workplace sexual harassment and subsequent risk of depressive symptoms and depressive disorder. METHODS: We examined 9,981 individuals who participated in the Work Environment and Health in Denmark survey in 2012 and 2014 and 6,647 individuals who also participated in 2016, all unexposed to sexual harassment in 2012. Depressive symptoms and disorder were assessed with the Major Depression Inventory. Using linear regression, we estimated the associations between onset of sexual harassment in the 12 months preceding the 2014 survey and depressive symptoms in 2014 and 2016, respectively. Using logistic regression, we estimated risk of incident depressive disorder in 2014. RESULTS: Onset of sexual harassment was associated with elevated depressive symptoms in 2014, both for harassment by non-workplace personnel (e.g., patients, estimate (B): 1.61, 95% CI: 0.51-2.72, p = 0.004) and workplace personnel (e.g., supervisors, B: 3.85, 95% CI: 2.51-5.20, p < 0.001), after adjustment for depressive symptoms in 2012. Harassment by workplace personnel was further associated with elevated depressive symptoms in 2016 after adjustment for symptoms in 2012, but not after adjustment for symptoms in 2014. Harassment by workplace personnel was associated with incident depressive disorder in 2014 (odds ratio: 5.26, 95% CI: 2.68-10.31, p < 0.001). LIMITATIONS: Depressive symptoms and disorder were assessed with a validated self-administered rating scale but not a clinical diagnostic interview. Participants reporting harassment in 2014 had elevated depressive symptoms already in 2012 requiring future investigation. CONCLUSIONS: Exposure to sexual harassments at the workplace may be a contributing factor in the aetiology of depressive symptoms and disorder.

Onset of Workplace Bullying and Risk of Weight Gain: A Multicohort Longitudinal Study.

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to examine the onset of workplace bullying as a risk factor for BMI increase. METHODS: Repeated biennial survey data from three Nordic cohort studies were used, totaling 46,148 participants (67,337 participant observations) aged between 18 and 65 who did not have obesity and who were not bullied at the baseline. Multinomial logistic regression was applied for the analysis under the framework of generalized estimating equations. RESULTS: Five percent reported onset of workplace bullying within 2 years from the baseline. In confounder-adjusted models, onset of workplace bullying was associated with a higher risk of weight gain of ≥ 1 BMI unit (odds ratio = 1.09; 95% CI: 1.01-1.19) and of ≥ 2.5 BMI units (odds ratio = 1.24; 95% CI: 1.06-1.45). A dose-response pattern was observed, and those exposed to workplace bullying more frequently showed a higher risk (Ptrend = 0.04). The association was robust to adjustments, restrictions, stratifications, and use of relative/absolute scales for BMI change. CONCLUSIONS: Participants with exposure to the onset of workplace bullying were more likely to gain weight, a possible pathway linking workplace bullying to increased long-term risk of type 2 diabetes.