Documents Thielen, Karsten 3 results

"We investigated the prevalence of reduced demand-specific work ability, its association with age, gender, education, poor health, and working conditions, and the interaction between poor health and working conditions regarding reduced demand-specific work ability. We used cross-sectional questionnaire data from 3381 full-time employees responding to questions about vocational education, job demands and social support (working conditions), musculoskeletal pain (MSP) and major depression (MD) (poor health) and seven questions about difficulty managing different job demands (reduced demand-specific work ability). Reduced demand-specific work ability varied from 9% to 19% among the 46-year old and from 11% to 21% among the 56-year old. Age was associated with two, gender with four, and education with all measures of reduced demand-specific work ability. MSP was associated with four and MD was associated with six measures of reduced demand-specific work ability. We found no interaction between working conditions and poor health regarding reduced demand-specific work ability."

"Background: Uncertainties exist about the strength of the relation between socioeconomic position and depressive disorders. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between education, occupation, employment and income and depressive disorders measured as minor and major depression, as well as antidepressant prescriptions. Methods: Data were collected from a Danish cross-sectional study collected year 2000, comprising 9254 subjects, 55% women, and aged 36–56 years. Register-based information on education, income and prescription were used. Results: The prevalence of major depression DSM-IV algorithm was 3.3% among men and women, whereas minor depression and prescriptions revealed statistically significant higher prevalence among females. A social gradient was found for all depressive end-points with the strongest estimates related to major depressive disorder (MDD). The associations were as follows: MDD and low education odds ratio (OR) 2.38 (CI 95% 1.68 to 3.37), MDD and non-employment OR 11.67 (CI 95% 8.06 to 16.89), MDD and low income OR 9.78 (CI 95% 6.49 to 14.74). Education only explained a minor part of the association between non-employment and depressive disorders and no associations were found between education and prescription. This indicates a strong two-way association between depression and non-employment, low-income respectively.Conclusion: A social gradient in depressive disorders was found regardless of socioeconomic position being measured by education, occupation, employment or income. Severe socioeconomic consequences of depression are indicated by the fact that the associations with non-employment and low income were much stronger than the association with low education."

"BACKGROUND: A study was undertaken to investigate whether job insecurity predicts incident use of antidepressant medication and whether the association is modified by a history of prolonged unemployment.METHODS: A prospective follow-up study was performed in 5142 Danish employees, including 632 employees with and 4510 without a history of prolonged unemployment. Participants were drawn from a random 10% sample of the Danish population. Survey data on job insecurity were linked with register data on history of unemployment and dispensing of antidepressant medication between June 2000 and December 2003 retrieved from the Danish Medicinal Product Statistics. Respondents with major depression at baseline or antidepressant use in the 5 years preceding baseline were excluded.RESULTS: Job insecurity predicted use of antidepressants after adjustment for sex, age, cohabitation, socioeconomic position and alcohol consumption (OR 1.43, 95% CI 1.09 to 1.88). The effect was attenuated after further adjustment for baseline depressive symptoms (OR 1.15, 95% CI 0.87 to 1.52). A history of prolonged unemployment predicted use of antidepressants in both models (OR 1.62, 95% CI 1.14 to 2.30 and OR 1.49, 95% CI 1.04 to 2.13, respectively) Compared with participants with neither job insecurity nor unemployment history, the OR for the joint effect of job insecurity and history of prolonged unemployment was substantially higher (OR 1.79, 95% CI 1.15 to 2.79) than the OR for job insecurity (OR 1.02) and unemployment history (OR 1.10) alone in the fully adjusted model.CONCLUSION: Job insecurity predicts incident use of antidepressants among Danish employees with a history of prolonged unemployment."