Photo: Angel Nieto/Mostphotos

In the last 15 years, sickness absence among employees in Sweden has been around 2.5 percent, i.e. around 130,000 people. The most common cause to sickness absence being mental illness. In 2022, psychiatric diagnoses, which include stress-related mental illness, accounted for 42 percent of the total sickness benefit costs in the country.

The connection between workplace bullying and mental illness been well known for long. However, there is a lack of knowledge regarding the potential connection between workplace bullying and sickness absence related to mental illness. This connection has now been investigated in a new study from researchers at the Department of Public Health and the Stress Research Institute at Stockholm University and Karolinska Institutet.

The study shows that the risk of being on sick leave due to a mental diagnosis increases by around 30 percent if the person is exposed to bullying in the workplace.

“This concerns the usual mental health diagnoses, such as depression, anxiety and stress-related illness, diagnoses that are also increasing in society,” says Rebecka Holmgren, PhD student at the Department of Public Health Sciences, Stockholm University.

Useful knowledge for managers and personnel managers

Holmgren and the rest of the research team also investigated whether those who have had a previous sick leave due to one of these diagnoses report to a greater extent that they are bullied in the workplace.

“However, there we found no connection. The primary connection we found is that bullying increases the risk of sick leave,” she says.

Those who can benefit from the results of the study are management and personnel managers in organizations and companies, according to Holmgren.

“It is important for them to know that there is a risk that some individuals will not actually be able to continue working after something like this has happened. This means a suffering for the individual but also leads to a cost for the organization. So it is important that managers and personnel managers take actions to prevent bullying from taking place at all,” she says.

Research based on a long-term survey

The study draws upon data from SLOSH, a survey that is being conducted at the Stress Research Institute at Stockholm University on, among other things, how working life, working environment, private life, retirement and health affect each other in Sweden over a long period of time.

“An inquiry form is sent out every two years and individuals can participate several years in a row. In this study, we have selected individuals who have participated during one year. After they have answered the questions in the inquiry form, we have followed them in registers for sick leave during two years,” Holmgren says.

The researchers have made comparisons between one group of individuals who report that they have been bullied at the workplace and a corresponding group who state that they have not been subjected to bullying. Other factors that have been weighed in with relation to the two groups - to make them as comparable as possible in terms of sick leave - are gender distribution, what the home conditions are and how they experience stress at the workplace and previous sick leaves due to mental illness.

Prevention does not have to be directly aimed at bullying

In total, it is about 1,600 individuals in each group, where those in one group claim to have been bullied and those in the other group do not.

“Of these, 116 people were called off sick in the group where they stated that they had been bullied. The corresponding figure for sick leave for the other group was 87. This indicates a 30 percent increased risk of sick leave due to bullying,” Holmgren says.

When it comes to recommendations for preventive measures to counteract sick leave due to bullying in the workplace, Rebecka Holmgren states that they do not necessarily have to be aimed at bullying as such.

“If you look at what research says about risk factors for bullying, it turns out that many of them can be found in the work environment. These are factors such as a lack of leadership, unclear roles as well as organizational changes. So measures to prevent bullying can generally be more about ensuring a good working environment and a good structure as a whole,” she says.

The article Bidirectional associations between workplace bullying and sickness absence due to common mental disorders – a propensity-score matched cohort study.

Håkan Soold