Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on sickness absence for mental ill health in National Health Service staff
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Abstract
To explore the patterns of sickness absence in National Health Service (NHS) staff attributable to mental ill health during the first wave of the COVID-19 epidemic in March–July 2020.
Design
Case-referent analysis of a secondary dataset.
Setting
NHS Trusts in England.
Participants
Pseudonymised data on 959 356 employees who were continuously employed by NHS trusts during 1 January 2019 to 31 July 2020.
Main outcome measures
Trends in the burden of sickness absence due to mental ill health from 2019 to 2020 according to demographic, regional and occupational characteristics.
Results
Over the study period, 164 202 new sickness absence episodes for mental ill health were recorded in 12.5% (119 525) of the study sample. There was a spike of sickness absence for mental ill health in March–April 2020 (899 730 days lost) compared with 519 807 days in March–April 2019; the surge was driven by an increase in new episodes of long-term absence and had diminished by May/June 2020. The increase was greatest in those aged >60 years (227%) and among employees of Asian and Black ethnic origin (109%–136%). Among doctors and dentists, the number of days absent declined by 12.7%. The biggest increase was in London (122%) and the smallest in the East Midlands (43.7%); the variation between regions reflected the rates of COVID-19 sickness absence during the same period.
Conclusion
Although the COVID-19 epidemic led to an increase in sickness absence attributed to mental ill health in NHS staff, this had substantially declined by May/June 2020, corresponding with the decrease in pressures at work as the first wave of the epidemic subsided.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2021.06.09.21258629: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter:…
SciScore for 10.1101/2021.06.09.21258629: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.
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