Employees through depression have higher costs of the same family to short-term disability and absenteeism-even after receiving antidepressant therapy, reports a study in the February Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, official publication of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM).
Led by Suellen Curkendall, Ph.D., of Thomson Reuters Healthcare, Washington, D.C., the researchers used insurance claims and employee health and productivity databases to look at the relationship between antidepressant treatment and productivity costs.
The results suggested that employees with depression were all over twice as likely to appliance short-term disability withdrawal, compared to workers without dolefulness. For workers with grave depression, the short-term disability rate was three spells higher.

Employees through depression also missed more work days. "Even hind receiving antidepressant treatment, patients with depression noiseless have significant productivity deficits," Curkendall and colleagues set down in black and white. They estimate yearly report short-term disability costs at about $1,000 per doer through depression and $1,700 per performer with morose depression-much higher than by reason of common diseases of that kind taken in the character of high courage pressure, diabetes, and rheumatoid arthritis.
Many studies have linked indentation to reduced productivity at be in action, but less is known about how productivity is affected by method of treating for depression. The renovated results show that fair in workers taking antidepressant drugs, depression is associated by increased disability and absenteeism.
The productivity losses in likelihood result from perversion or depressive symptoms that persist despite treatment, according to Curkendall and colleagues. They compose, "Therapies that can better horsemanship hollowness may make ready opportunities for savings to employers."

more