What is behind psychosocial sick leave?
Take Home Messages:
It is possible to identify specific psychosocial predictors of sickness absence and this may help determine new interventions to improve the health of workers.
Why the research matters:
Psychosocial health complaints often occur in the working population and frequently lead to sickness absence.
Understanding what causes psychosocial sick leave is the first step in determining solutions to reduce these health complaints.
What the research involved:
In the Netherlands psychosocial sick leave accounts for about 30% of all sick leaves. However, the factors that increase workers’ risk of taking psychosocial sick leave are not clear. Researchers from Maastricht University performed a meta-analysis of prospective studies on the potential relation between certain aspects of workers and this type of sick leave. Studies on sickness absence due to somatic reasons were explicitly excluded to make the studies and data on psychosocial reasons more comparable.
After thorough searching in three electronic databases for articles published until August 2006, the researchers found 20 articles that fulfilled their inclusion criteria. From these articles the researchers were able to pool all data and calculate summary odds of increased risk for psychosocial sickness absence.
Summary of research findings:
The following factors were significant predictors of workers taking psychosocial sick leave:
- Being unmarried;
- Experiencing psychosomatic complaints;
- Using medication;
- Having a burnout;
- Suffering from psychological problems;
- Having low job control;
- Having low decision latitude; and
- Experiencing no fairness at work.
Although, some of these factors may seem a bit obvious, more research focussing on these predictive factors may give good insight on ways to decrease psychosocial sick leave.
Original research:
A meta-analysis of observational studies identifies predictors of sickness absence.
Duijts SFA, Kant I, Swaen GMH, van den Brandt PA, Zeegers MPA.
Journal of Clinical Epidemiology 2007;60:1105-15.
PubMed abstract