Mental health worse after the workplace against non -work injuries

Patients with injuries in the workplace have worse mental health results with the time that patients with non -work injuries, according to recent research.

In a cohort study that included more than 35,000 patients, anxiety rates and any mental disorder were more strongly associated with injuries in the workplace than injuries outside the workplace.

“There are many research that details that injuries in the workplace lead to bad mental health results, but there is not much research that compares injuries in the workplace with injuries outside the workplace in front of the head,” said co -author Anthony Wightman, MD, resident of Internal Medicine of the first year at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, he said. Medscape Medical News. “That is what we wanted to determine.”

The study It was published Online February 13 in Jama Network open.

Anxiety association

Using data from the Workers Compensation Board in Manitoba and the Database of the Manitoba Health Policies Center, the researchers evaluated patients who had been hospitalized between 2002 and 2018 due to an injury that required surgery.

They combined 7556 patients with injuries in the workplace with 28,901 patients with non -work injuries. The cohorts combined by age, sex, geographical region and severity of the lesions. The main result was a diagnosis of mental disorder, which includes anxiety, depression, substance abuse, suicide attempt and any mental disorder, measured 2 years before the lesion and 2 years after the lesion.

People in the army, people with traumatic brain injuries and people with repetitive tension lesions were excluded. “The exposure was a traumatic physical injury that required surgery with anesthesia. We were looking for specific injuries in the workplace at a discreet time, ”said Wightman.

The majority of patients in the lesions group in the workplace were men (n = 5721; 75.7%). The average age of the group was 44.8 years, 61.2% of patients (n = 4624) lived in urban areas, and 60.1% (n = 4545) it was considered that it had low income.

The most frequent causes of injuries were objects in the environment (35.0%), followed by the environment (27.2%) and body position (22.1%). Half of the lesions were in a upper limb. The most common types of injuries were strains, sprains and tears (40.3%), followed by fractures and dislocations (25.2%). The service, construction and manufacturing industries represented most of the injuries in the workplace.

In the 2 years prior to the lesion, the unjustified rate index (URR) of all mental disorders was lower in the cohort of injuries in the workplace than in the group of injuries without work (0.81). URRs for depression (0.89) and substance consumption disorder (0.87) were lower after their injury. But the period of interaction of the period of the × attention group was significant for anxiety and any mental disorder, which suggests a stronger association with an injury in the workplace than with injuries without place to work.

‘An additional stress’

“We have conducted similar studies in the past, and this is our first study that showed that there is a problem,” said co -author Sarvesh Logsetty, MD, professor of surgery, psychiatry and child health at the Max Rady Medicine Faculty of the University of Manitoba. Medscape Medical News.

“Part of our trip has understood that there are tensions associated with, for example, a broken leg that everyone has: pain, time in the hospital, the time you have to remove from work, economic challenges, stress in your family and things like that. But there is additional stress of being at work, which means that he is returning to the place where his injury occurred, ”said Logsetty.

“If he had a ski accident, he can stay away from skiing. But if they have injuries that occurred because it fell from the roof and must do that job again, it could be additional stress, ”he said.

Another stress is financial. “Although workers compensation is generous these days, it does not pay 100%. They only pay a portion, depending on the jurisdiction in which it is located, so there is a pattern of responding to the injury that is different from whether they were skiing and breaking the leg. “

The authors expect their findings to increase the awareness of the consequences for the mental health of the injuries in the workplace and encourage those who keep them seek help.

“A large part of what we expect to happen with our work is that people recognize that there may be mental health consequences associated with injuries in the workplace. With luck, this could help reduce part of the stigma around people looking for health who may be expressing symptoms so they can seek help, ”said Rae Spiwak, PHD, an assistant professor of surgery at the Max Rady College of Medicine. Medscape Medical News.

“We know that seeking early help, especially if you are experiencing some mental health symptoms, is key to improving results and helping people return to their lives and work. It is definitely important to raise awareness about some of these possible consequences of the injury in the workplace, ”said Spiwak.

‘Valuable Research’

“This is a valuable investigation,” said Simon Sherry, PHD, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Dalhousie University in Halifax.

“It makes sense that stress on the return to the workplace in which it was injured and sailed through the process often difficult to present claims due to injuries and ensure compensation could contribute to deteriorating mental health. Both are exclusive problems of those who incurred injuries in the workplace, ”said Sherry.

“The stress on lost income and pressure to return to early work could be felt equally by those who were injured outside work, but whose injury still requires a license. But the moral of this research is clear: mental illness is frequent after an injury, and more can be done to support the mental health of the injured, whether they were injured in the workplace or not, ”he said.

The financing for this study was obtained from a subsidy of the research and innovation program of the workplace of the Compensation Board of Workers of Manitoba. Wightman, Logsetty, Spiwak and Sherry did not report relevant financial relations.