Work related factors and ill health The Whitehall II Study

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. 1999 The influences of the psychosocial work environment on self-reported ill-health including alcohol dependence, health functioning, psychiatric morbidity, and sickness absence are reported from the longitudinal Whitehall II cohort study of British civil servants. Effort reward imbalance is associated with increased risk of alcohol dependence, psychiatric disorder, long spells of sickness absence and poor health functioning. High job demands predict poor health functioning and psychiatric disorder. Low decision latitude is moderately associated with risk of alcohol dependence. Work social supports and control over work have a protective effect on mental health and health functioning and reduce risk of spells of sickness absence. The work environment appears to be an important influence on health but the importance of different aspects of work varies according to the health outcome. Work factors are as important as non-work influences on health. Our results suggest that intervention at the level of work design, organisation and management may reduce morbidity in working populations. This report and the work it describes were funded by the Health and Safety Executive. Its contents, including any opinions and/or conclusions expressed, are those of the author(s) alone and do not necessarily reflect HSE policy. We thank our colleagues on the Whitehall II team who were involved in the work for this report, especially Rebecca Fuhrer and Martin Shipley. This report examines the influence of work related factors on self reported ill-health, including alcohol dependence, psychiatric morbidity and health functioning in the Whitehall II study. It also examines the relationship between work related factors and short and long spells of sickness absence. The objectives of the project were: 1. To establish the relative contribution of work related factors to the development of ill-health, including the percentage increased risk in ill-health attributable to work related factors and the significance of this risk relative to non-work related factors. 2. To establish which work related factors contribute most to ill-health. These analyses will establish which work related factors contribute to which disease outcomes. These analyses have been carried out in the longitudinal Whitehall II study of 10308 male and female civil servants, aged 35-55 years on entry to the study in 1985. This cohort of …