Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on sickness absence for mental ill health in National Health Service staff.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

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

SUBMITTER: van der Plaat DA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8572362 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature