Business

Sick note staff ‘will die earlier’

October 06, 2008

Employees who take regular periods of long-term sick leave die earlier than their colleagues, a study by the British Medical Journal has said.

Researchers found that workers with more than one absence requiring a doctor’s note on their records were 66 per cent more likely to die prematurely.

And workers who had to stay off work because of psychiatric problems were two and a half times more likely to die of cancer.

Those who had to take time off because of circulatory disease were the most likely to die before their healthy colleagues. Researchers found they had a four times higher chance of a premature death.

Workers taking time off as a result of psychiatric diseases were nearly twice as likely to die prematurely, and those who had time away from work for surgery were more than twice as likely.

However employees who suffered musculoskeletal diseases had no increased risk.

The University College London research, published by the BMJ, looked at the sickness records of 6,478 British civil servants.

Study leader Jenny Head told BBC Online that the link between psychiatric illness and cancer could be due to depressed people failing to visit their doctor early enough.

| View Comments (2)