ArticleInternational archives of occupational and environmental health2011
Psychological symptoms and subsequent sickness absence.
Article in International archives of occupational and environmental health, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed.
- Video-based cognitive-behavioral intervention for COVID-19 anxiety: a randomized controlled trial.Trends in psychiatry and psychotherapyTrial
- Joint contribution of body mass index and psychological distress to short and long sickness absence among young and early midlife public sector employees: a register-linked follow-up study.European journal of public health · 2026Article
- Transdiagnostic Symptoms in Electronic Health Records of Sick-Listed Employees.Journal of occupational rehabilitation · 2026Article
- Joint contributions of psychological distress and demanding working conditions to short and long sickness absence among young and early midlife municipal employees.European journal of public health · 2025Article
- Sickness absence trajectories among young and early midlife employees with psychological distress: the contributions of social and health-related factors in a longitudinal register linkage study.International archives of occupational and environmental health · 2025Article
- Distress, Work Satisfaction, and Work Ability are Mediators of the Relation Between Psychosocial Working Conditions and Mental Health-Related Long-Term Sickness Absence.Journal of occupational rehabilitation · 2021Article
- Assessing measurement equivalence of the Danish and Dutch Four-Dimensional Symptom Questionnaire using differential item and test functioning analysis.Scandinavian journal of public health · 2021Article
- Mood, anxiety, and alcohol use disorders and later cause-specific sick leave in young adult employees.BMC public health · 2016Article
- Medically unexplained physical symptoms and work functioning over 2 years: their association and the influence of depressive and anxiety disorders and job characteristics.BMC family practice · 2016Article
- Mental health symptoms identify workers at risk of long-term sickness absence due to mental disorders: prospective cohort study with 2-year follow-up.BMC public health · 2015Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
purposeMental health problems are associated with sickness absence (SA). The present study aimed at establishing which symptoms-distress, depression, anxiety, or somatization-at which symptom levels were associated with SA frequency and duration. Moreover, a number of possible confounders or effect modifiers were taken into account.
methodsA survey was completed by 3,678 employees of a large Dutch telecom company. Symptoms were measured using the Four-Dimensional Symptom Questionnaire (4DSQ). SA data were registered by the company's occupational health service during the 12 months' period following the survey. Poisson regression was used to analyze the number of SA spells (SA frequency). Negative binomial regression was used to analyze the total number of SA days (SA duration).
resultsIn the bivariate analyses distress, depression, anxiety, and somatization impacted on SA frequency and duration. In the multivariate analyses, anxiety and depression turned out not to be directly associated with SA, suggesting that the effect of anxiety and depression was due to the association between anxiety/depression and distress/somatization. Regarding the SA frequency, the rate ratio for 'subclinical' distress was 1.13 (95% CI 1.03-1.25), for 'clinical' distress 1.26 (1.08-1.47), for 'subclinical' somatization 1.34 (1.23-1.46), and for 'clinical' somatization 1.69 (1.46-1.95). Regarding the SA duration, the count ratio for 'subclinical' distress was 1.15 (95% CI 0.91-1.44), for 'clinical' distress 1.50 (1.04-2.16), for 'subclinical' somatization 1.34 (1.10-1.64), and for 'clinical' somatization 1.45 (1.04-2.03).
conclusionsSomatization and distress are key to understand why depression and anxiety are related to SA.
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