A Japanese Stress Check Program screening tool predicts employee long-term sickness absence: a prospective study.

Tsutsumi A et al. J Occup Health. 2018 25;60:55-63.

北里大学のTsutsumi教授らの研究グループは、
日本の企業従業員のデータを用いて、
「ストレスチェック」の高ストレス者とその後の長期病気休暇の関連を見出しました。
研究はJ Occup Health誌に発表されました。

研究は日本の金融業の従業員約14000人（男性、女性それぞれ約7000人）を対象に行われました。
2015年にストレスチェック（職業性簡易ストレス調査票による自記式問診および推奨される方法でフォロー）
が行われ、その後1年間追跡されました。
1年間の追跡期間中（17239人・月）、男性34人、女性35人が1か月以上の病気休暇となりました。
ストレスチェックで「高ストレス」だった従業員は、そうでない従業員にくらべ、
男性では6.6倍（Hazard ratio:6.59, 95％CI:3.04-14.25）、女性では2.8倍（HR:2.77, 95％CI:1.32-5.83）
新たに長期休暇になるリスクが高くなっていました。

論文の詳細はこちら。

Abstract

Objectives: On December 1, 2015, the Japanese government launched the Stress Check Program, a new occupational health policy to screen employees for high psychosocial stress in the workplace. As only weak evidence exists for the effectiveness of the program, we sought to estimate the risk of stress-associated long-term sickness absence as defined in the program manual.

Methods: Participants were 7356 male and 7362 female employees in a financial service company who completed the Brief Job Stress Questionnaire (BJSQ). We followed them for 1 year and used company records to identify employees with sickness absence of 1 month or longer. We defined high-risk employees using the BJSQ and criteria recommended by the program manual. We used the Cox proportional regression model to evaluate the prospective association between stress and long-term sickness absence.

Results: During the follow-up period, we identified 34 male and 35 female employees who took long-term sickness absence. After adjustment for age, length of service, job type, position, and post-examination interview, hazard ratios (95% confidence intervals) for incident long-term sickness absence in high-stress employees were 6.59 (3.04-14.25) for men and 2.77 (1.32-5.83) for women. The corresponding population attributable risks for high stress were 23.8% (10.3-42.6) for men and 21.0% (4.6-42.1) for women.

Conclusions: During the 1-year follow-up, employees identified as high stress (as defined by the Stress Check Program manual) had significantly elevated risks for long-term sickness absence.