Many European countries have increased retirement ages to address the challenge of population ageing. However, job strain which is the combination of high job demands and low job control may be an obstacle to extending the working lives of older workers. Job strain is associated with poor health and early work exit among older workers, but less is known about whether job strain impacts working life expectancy (WLE)—an increasingly employed summary measure capturing the length of working lives. This study aims to fill this gap in the literature. The sample included n = 13 225 individuals aged 50 years or older at baseline providing 53 004 persons-observations from the Swedish Longitudinal Occupational Survey of Health in 2008 through 2020. We used continuous time multi-state Markov models to assess the average number of years people may be expected to work beyond age 50 years by job strain, and stratified by sex, occupational class, and level of education. Job strain was associated with a significantly shorter WLE (by about 6 months to a year) among those who experienced job strain compared to those who did not experience job strain. Our findings suggest that job strain may play a role in shortening the working lives of older people. The findings further suggest that if older workers are to remain in the labor market for longer periods, this may require improvements of psychosocial working conditions.

Aim: The COVID-19 pandemic and associated restrictions posed challenges to people’s private and work lives. This included a rapid shift from on-site to remote work for many working adults in Sweden and internationally, and limited opportunities for indoor social and leisure activities. This involved risks for increased loneliness and social isolation, particularly among those mainly working remotely. In this context, nature visits may mitigate loneliness. This study adds to existing research in investigating whether a higher degree of remote work during COVID-19 was related to increased loneliness and whether nature visits mitigated loneliness, especially for those who mainly worked remotely. Subject and methods: The sample comprised a subsample of respondents to the Swedish Longitudinal Occupational Survey of Health 2020 (n = 984). Nature-related habits (NRH) were measured using self-reported frequency of visits to various natural environments. The effect of remote work, NRH, and time on loneliness (before – during COVID-19) was analyzed using linear mixed models while controlling for confounders. Results: Loneliness levels during COVID-19 were highest and increased the most compared to before the pandemic among individuals with the greatest degree of working remotely. Engaging daily in NRH was associated with lower loneliness levels, particularly among individuals mostly working remotely. This was observed in a three-way interaction effect between remote work, NRH, and time on loneliness. Conclusion: Daily nature visits may protect against loneliness during and beyond crises like COVID-19, particularly for those mainly working remotely. Policies preserving and facilitating access to nature may promote resilience during and beyond crises like COVID-19.

Aims: To assess the associations of onset of workplace conflict on incident cardiovascular disease (CVD) and changes in biomarkers.

Methods: The study included 2704 employees aged 18–65 years and free of workplace conflict at baseline (T₀), from the Swedish Work, Lipids, Fibrinogen study (proportion of women: 17 %). Exposure to onset of workplace conflict was ascertained at T₁ using self-reports (mean interval between T₀ and T₁: 5 years). Participants were linked to nationwide registers to ascertain incident CVD. Changes in biomarkers, including body mass index, waist-hip ratio, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, triglycerides, glucose and fibrinogen, were measured and calculated between T₀ and T₁. Cox regressions and linear regressions were applied for analyses on conflicts in relation to CVD and conflicts in relation to changes in biomarkers, respectively. Age, sex, educational level, marital status, pre-existing comorbidities, employment contract, and shift work were adjusted for in the main analyses.

Results: About 10 % experienced onset of workplace conflict between T₀ and T₁. Among 2682 participants who were free from CVD at T₀, 87 CVD events were recorded (mean follow-up from T₁: 7.8 years, incidence rate: 41.5/10,000 person-year). Onset of workplace conflict at T₁ was associated with 2.42 times (95 %CI 1.42, 4.12) higher risk of developing CVD during the follow-up period. Among 877 participants with information on changes in fibrinogen, onset of workplace conflict at T₁ was associated with fibrinogen increase from T₀ to T₁ (mean difference=0.14; 95 %CI 0.02, 0.25) and onset of high fibrinogen (OR=1.41; 95 %CI 1.04,1.90). These associations were largely robust for additional adjustments, restrictions and consideration of selection bias and were not likely to be affected by reverse causation.

Conclusions: Onset of workplace conflict was related to higher risks of developing CVD and fibrinogen increase.

Background: Evidence concerning workplace bullying as a risk factor for mental disorders is currently limited to depressive disorders and mainly based on non-clinical assessments. This study aims to examine the prospective association of self-reported workplace bullying with different types of register-based hospital-diagnosed mental disorders and redeemed psychotropic drug prescriptions. Methods: Using a cohort study design, we examined a pooled dataset of 75,252 participants from 14 questionnaire-based surveys conducted between 2004 and 2014. In the questionnaires, workplace bullying was measured by a single item. The questionnaires were linked to Danish registers on hospital-diagnosed mental disorders and redeemed psychotropic drug prescriptions up to 2016. Data were analysed by multivariate Cox proportional hazard models, including only participants without a history of mental disorders or prescriptions since 1995. Results: After adjustment for sex, age, marital and socio-economic status, workplace bullying was associated with an excess risk of any mental disorder (HR 1.37; 95 % CI: 1.17–1.59) as well as mood disorders and neurotic, stress-related, and somatoform disorders. In stratified analyses, this association were statistically significant only among women. Workplace bullying was also associated with any psychotropic drug prescription (fully-adjusted HR 1.43; 95 % CI: 1.35–1.53). This association was observed in both sexes and for all prescriptions, including anxiolytics, hypnotics and sedatives, antidepressants, and nootropics. Limitations: Firm conclusions about sex-related differences cannot be drawn. Residual confounding by unmeasured factors such as personality cannot be ruled out. Conclusions: Workplace bullying was associated with higher risks of diagnosed mental disorders among women and psychotropic drug prescriptions in both sexes.

Long-lasting, excessive stress exposure can have serious health consequences and consequently, to identify potentially harmful consequences, it is important to develop self-report measures of long-lasting stress in everyday life. The complexity of long-lasting excessive stress also raises questions about the efficacy of widely used single-item measures to capture such harmful stress. This study examines the psychometric quality and validity of a brief eight-item scale, measuring long-lasting stress symptoms. Using data from a nationally representative sample, comprising 15,046 working individuals from the 2014 Swedish Longitudinal Occupational Survey of Health (SLOSH), the findings suggest retaining six of the original eight items, loading on two latent factors: ‘long-lasting perceived stress’ and ‘long-lasting emotional stress’. The high correlation between the two factors suggests the potential for a unified measure to address specific research objectives. The subscales demonstrate concurrent validity with well-established stress-related measures. A single-item measure of perceived stress (‘I have days when I feel stressed all the time’) also correlated with the stress-related measures, although the correlation coefficients were slightly weaker.

Introduction: Research suggests that the prevalence of depressive disorder is increasing globally in the general population, but it is unclear if this holds true for the working population. We analysed e trends in the prevalence of depressive disorder in four nationwide, weighted samples of the Danish working population from 2012 to 2018.

Methods: We used data from the Work Environment and Health in Denmark study, which is a series of nationwide cross-sectional surveys on working conditions and health conducted in 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2018 (N = 76,770). We used a Major Depression Inventory score ≥ 21 to indicate a depressive disorder and further ICD-10 and DSM-IV algorithms in supplementary analyses. We calculated weighted prevalence, change in prevalence, and estimated average Annual Percent Change (APC).

Results: The point-prevalence of depressive disorder was 7.2 % (95 % CI: 7.2; 7.3) in the 2012-survey and 11.2 % (11.1; 11.2) in 2018, yielding a total relative increase in prevalence over the six-year period of 54.0 % (53.6; 55.8) and an APC of 6.7 (95 % CI: 2.3; 11.4). We observed the higher prevalence in both men and women, in all age and educational groups, and in different occupational positions. Women, young individuals, and individuals of lower socioeconomic position had a higher prevalence of depressive disorder that persisted in all waves. Analyses using the ICD-10 or DSM-IV definitions of depressive disorder showed lower prevalence but similar trends over time.

Conclusion: The results suggest that the general population trend towards an increase in depressive disorder also applies to the working population in Denmark.

While sleep characteristics have been associated with cardiovascular disease (CVD), most studies have focused on single timepoints or isolated aspects. The prognostic value of broader, long-term sleep patterns remains unclear.

We used data from 24,223 participants in the Swedish Longitudinal Occupational Survey of Health (SLOSH), with biennial follow-up between 2010 and 2018. Sleep characteristics were assessed via self-report and incident cardiovascular outcomes were identified through linkage to national registers. Cox proportional hazards models estimated associations between sleep variables and incident cardiovascular disease, and mixed-effects models assessed sleep trajectories.

During follow-up, 1,687 developed cardiovascular outcomes. Nighttime insomnia was not associated with increased CVD risk unless accompanied by daytime symptoms (HR 1.22, 95 % CI 1.03–1.44; reference: no insomnia and no daytime symptoms). Similarly, long sleep duration (>8 h) was associated with higher risk only when combined with daytime symptoms (HR 1.35, 95 % CI 1.13–1.61; reference: 6–8 h of sleep and no daytime symptoms). Trajectory analyses showed that participants with long sleep at baseline who later developed CVD had a gradual increase in sleep duration over time (β for CVD >8 h × time = 0.06, 95 % CI 0.04–0.07; β × time² = −0.005, 95 % CI –0.01 to 0.00), while long sleepers who remained free of CVD showed stable or declining patterns.

Daytime symptoms, particularly when accompanied by prolonged or increasing sleep, may reflect early physiological changes preceding cardiovascular disease. These findings highlight the importance of considering sleep patterns and changes over time rather than static measures alone.

Introduction: Sickness absence (SA) has been shown to be associated with several negative consequences, both for the affected individual as well as for society on the whole, in terms of economic loss. The most common reason for SA is SA due to common mental disorders (CMDs). Previous studies have indicated that there is an association between exposure to work-related offensive behaviours, such as harassment, bullying, violence and threats of different kinds and CMDs. However, the mechanistic pathway in this association is still largely unknown. For example, the associations between exposure to offensive or abusive behaviours and health outcomes may partially be explained by individual characteristics, including genetic predispositions and early experiences. The aim of the present study was to investigate the role of familial factors (genetics and shared early-life environment) and neuroticism in the associations between exposure to work-related violence/threats and harassment/bullying, and SA due to CMDs.

Method: The study sample included 8795 twin individuals from the Swedish Twin project of Disability pension and Sickness absence (STODS), including survey data from the Study of Twin Adults: Genes and Environment (STAGE) linked to national register data. Self-reported work-related violence and/or threats and work-related harassment including bullying and register data on SA due to CMDs were analysed using logistic regression on the whole sample, and conditional logistic regression among complete same-sex twin pairs discordant on exposures. Individuals were followed for a maximum of 13 years or until their first incident SA spell due to CMD. Interactions between neuroticism and exposures were assessed using both multiplicative and additive interaction analyses.

Results: Exposure to work-related violence/threats were associated with higher odds of SA due to CMDs when adjusting for age, sex, marital status, children living at home, education, type of residential area, work characteristics, and symptoms of depression and burnout (OR 2.11, 95% CI 1.52-2.95). Higher odds of SA due to CMDs were also found for exposure to harassment/bullying (OR 1.52, 95% CI 1.10-2.11) and a combined indicator of exposure to either of the kinds of exposure or exposure to both kinds, i.e. violence/threats and/or harassment/bullying (OR 1.98 95% CI 1.52-2.59), compared with the unexposed. Analyses of twin pairs discordant on exposure, using the unexposed twin sibling as reference, showed somewhat reduced ORs that were no longer statistically significant for all exposures. No multiplicative interaction was found between neuroticism and exposure to work-related violence/threats, or harassment. However, a statistically significant additive interaction was found between neuroticism and exposure to violence/threats, with higher odds of SA due to CMDs in the group scoring lower on neuroticism.

Conclusion: Exposure to work-related offensive behaviours were associated with SA due to CMDs. The results of the matched twin pair analysis indicated that these associations may be confounded by familial factors. In addition, an interaction effect between violence/threats and neuroticism was found. Thus, future studies investigating associations and causality between offensive behaviours at work and mental health-related outcomes should, when possible, consider familial factors and neuroticism.

Background The link between workplace bullying and poor mental health is well-known. However, little is known about the prospective and potentially reciprocal association between workplace bullying and mental health-related sickness absence. This 2-year prospective study examined bidirectional associations between exposure to workplace bullying and sickness absence due to common mental disorders (SA-CMD) while controlling for confounding factors from both work and private life.

Methods The study was based on propensity score-matched samples (N = 3216 and N = 552) from the Swedish Longitudinal Occupational Survey of Health, using surveys from years 2012, 2014 and 2016. Self-reported exposure to workplace bullying was linked to registry-based information regarding medically certified SA-CMD (≥ 14 consecutive days). The associations were examined by means of Cox proportional hazards regression and via conditional logistic regression analysis. Hazard ratios and odds ratios with 95% confidence intervals were estimated.

Results Exposure to workplace bullying was associated with an increased risk of incident SA-CMD (HR: 1.3, 95% CI: 1.0–1.8), after accounting for the influence of job demands, decision authority, previous SA-CMD, as well as other sociodemographic covariates. However, we found no statistically significant association between SA-CMD and subsequent workplace bullying (OR 1.2, 95% CI 0.7–1.9).

Conclusions The results support an association between self-reported workplace bullying and SA-CMD, independent of other sociodemographic factors and workplace stressors. Preventing workplace bullying could alleviate a share of the individual and societal burden caused by SA globally.