Do childhood infections affect labour market outcomes in adulthood and, if so, how?
A burgeoning body of literature suggests that poor childhood health leads to adverse health outcomes. lower educational attainment and weaker labour market outcomes in adulthood. We focus on an important but under-researched topic, which is the role played by infection-related hospitalization (IRH) in childhood and its links to labour market outcomes later in life. The participants aged 24-30 years in 2001 N =1706 were drawn from the Young Finns Study, which includes comprehensive registry data on IRHs in childhood at ages 0-18 years. These data are linked to longitudinal registry information on labour market outcomes (2001-2012) and parental background (1980). The estimations were performe…
Hostility, unemployment and health status: testing three theoretical models.
This study examined three theoretical models of hostility, health and life context. According to the psychosocial vulnerability hypothesis, there is an interaction between hostility and adverse conditions. The increased health risk in hostile individuals is assumed to stem from their lower ability to benefit from existing psychosocial resources. The second hypothesis, called here the social context model, considers adverse conditions as an antecedent of both hostility and health problems. The third model states that hostility is a predictor of being selected to adverse conditions involving risk to health (the selection hypothesis). The results from a survey of a population-based random samp…
Employment Status and Personal Income Before and After Onset of a Severe Mental Disorder: A Case-Control Study.
Objective: Individuals with severe mental disorders have an impaired ability to work and are likely to receive income transfer payments as their main source of income. However, the magnitude of this phenomenon remains unclear. Using longitudinal population cohort register data, the authors conducted a case-control study to examine the levels of employment and personal income before and after a first hospitalization for a serious mental disorder. Methods: All individuals (N=50,551) who had been hospitalized for schizophrenia, other nonaffective psychosis, or bipolar disorder in Finland between 1988 and 2015 were identified and matched with five randomly selected participants who were the sam…
Perceived Racial/Ethnic Discrimination and Psychological Outcomes Among Adult International Adoptees in Finland: Moderating Effects of Social Support and Sense of Coherence
Quantitative literature on international adoptees and racial/ethnic discrimination is lacking despite results in qualitative studies from Europe and the United States that have consistently indicated how racism constantly complicates adoptees' everyday lives. To advance the literature, the present study examined the prevalence of perceived racial/ethnic discrimination among 213 adult international adoptees in Finland (59.6% women and 40.4% men, mean age 24.1 years), and the association between perceived racial/ethnic discrimination and psychological well-being indicators, including psychological distress and sleeping problems. In addition, we examined social support and sense of coherence a…
School achievement in adolescence and the risk of mental disorders in early adulthood: a Finnish nationwide register study
AbstractSchool grades in adolescence have been linked to later psychiatric outcomes, but large-scale nationwide studies across the spectrum of mental disorders are scarce. In the present study, we examined the risk of a wide array of mental disorders in adulthood, as well as the risk of comorbidity, associated with school achievement in adolescence. We used population-based cohort data comprising all individuals born in Finland over the period 1980–2000 (N = 1,070,880) who were followed from age 15 or 16 until a diagnosis of mental disorder, emigration, death, or December 2017, whichever came first. Final grade average from comprehensive school was the exposure, and the first diagnosed ment…
Sense of coherence as a mediator between hostility and health
Abstract Objective: We proposed and tested a model in which low sense of coherence (SOC) was hypothesized to underlie the association between hostility and health problems. Methods: Structural equation modeling was based on cross-lagged 7-year follow-up data, relating to five measurement points in 433 female municipal employees. Results: The mediated model fitted well with the data. After adjustment for baseline characteristics, hostility was associated with increased risk of health problems, as indicated by records of sickness absences and poor self-rated health. Incorporating SOC into the model attenuated this association by 33–50%, depending on the indicator of health. The mediated effec…
Socioeconomic position at the age of 30 and the later risk of a mental disorder : a nationwide population-based register study
BackgroundA study was undertaken to examine the association between multiple indicators of socioeconomic position (SEP) at the age of 30 and the subsequent risk of the most common mental disorders.MethodsAll persons born in Finland between 1966 and 1986 who were alive and living in Finland at the end of the year when they turned 30 were included. Educational attainment, employment status and personal total income were used as the alternative measures of SEP. Cox proportional hazards models were used to examine the association of SEP at the age of 30 with later risk of mental disorders. Additional analyses were conducted using a sibling design to account for otherwise unobserved shared famil…
Personality, occupational sorting and routine work
Purpose – A prominent labour market feature in recent decades has been the increase in abstract and service jobs, while the demand for routine work has declined. This article examines whether the components of Type A behaviour predict workers’ selection into nonroutine abstract, non-routine service and routine jobs. Design/methodology/approach – Building on the work by Barrick et al. (2013), this article first presents how the theory of purposeful work behaviour can be used to explain how individuals with different levels of Type A components sort into abstract, service and routine jobs. Then, using longitudinal data, it examines whether the components of Type A behaviour predict occupation…
Organizational justice at school and its associations with pupils' psychosocial school environment, health, and wellbeing.
It has been shown that the psychosocial environment perceived by school staff is associated with children's academic performance and wellbeing. In this study we examined the associations between organizational justice (procedural and relational justice) as reported by school staff and pupils' perceptions of their school environment, health problems, academic performance, and absenteeism. We combined data from two surveys: for the staff (the Finnish Public Sector Study, n = 1946) and pupils (the Finnish school health promotion survey, n = 11,781 boys and 12,842 girls) of 136 secondary schools, collected during 2004-2005. Multilevel cumulative logistic regression analyses showed that after ad…
Employment and earnings trajectories before and after sickness absence due to major depressive disorder: a nationwide case-control study.
ObjectivesTo examine employment and earnings trajectories before and after the first sickness absence period due to major depressive disorder (MDD).MethodsAll individuals (n=158 813) in Finland who had a first sickness absence period (lasting longer than 9 days) due to MDD between 2005 and 2015 were matched with one randomly selected individual of the same age and gender with no history of MDD. Employment status and earnings were measured using register-based data annually from 2005 to 2015. Generalised estimating equations were used to examine the trajectories of employment and earnings before and after MDD diagnosis in men and women separately.ResultsSickness absence due to MDD was associ…
Physical Activity, Sleep, and Symptoms of Depression in Adults - Testing for Mediation
Abstract Purpose: Physical activity, sleep problems, and symptoms of depression contribute to overall well-being. The factors are reciprocally associated, but the nature of these associations remains unclear. The present study examined whether sleep problems mediated the association between physical activity and depressive symptoms. Methods: The eligible population (n = 3596) consisted of adults from the ongoing, population-based Cardiovascular Risk in Young Finns Study started in 1980. Participants’ leisure-time physical activity was assessed with physical activity index (2007) and sleep problems with Jenkins’ Sleep Questionnaire in 2007 and 2011. Depressive symptoms were measured using mo…
Contribution of parental and school personnel smoking to health risk behaviours among Finnish adolescents.
Abstract Background This study compared parental smoking with school personnel smoking in relation to adolescents' smoking behaviours, alcohol use, and illicit drug use. Methods A cross-sectional survey for 24,379 adolescents was linked to a survey for 1946 school employees in 136 Finnish schools in 2004-2005. Surveys included smoking prevalence reported by school staff, adolescents' reports of school staff and parental smoking, adolescents' own smoking behaviours, alcohol use, and illicit drug use. Multilevel analyses were adjusted for individual and school-level confounding factors. Results Parental smoking was associated with all health risk behaviours among both sexes (risk range 1.39 t…
Personality, occupational sorting and routine work
PurposeA prominent labour market feature in recent decades has been the increase in abstract and service jobs, while the demand for routine work has declined. This article examines whether the components of Type A behaviour predict workers' selection into non-routine abstract, non-routine service and routine jobs.Design/methodology/approachBuilding on the work by Barrick et al. (2013), this article first presents how the theory of purposeful work behaviour can be used to explain how individuals with different levels of Type A components sort into abstract, service and routine jobs. Then, using longitudinal data, it examines whether the components of Type A behaviour predict occupational sor…
Mental health and hostility as predictors of temporary employment: Evidence from two prospective studies
We used two studies to examine whether mental health and hostility predicted temporary employment. Study 1 involved a cohort of 970 Finnish hospital employees (102 men, 868 women) who had temporary job contracts at baseline. After adjustment for demographics, organisational tenure and part-time work status, doctor-diagnosed psychiatric disorder predicted continuing in temporary employment instead of receiving a permanent job by the end of the 2-year follow-up. A higher level of hostility was also associated with temporary employment, but only among employees in low socioeconomic positions. In Study 2, anxiety and aggressive behaviour were measured in a cohort of 226 Finnish school children …
Mental disorders and long-term labour market outcomes : nationwide cohort study of 2 055 720 individuals
Objective: To examine the associations between an onset of serious mental disorders before the age of 25 with subsequent employment, income, and education outcomes. Methods: Nationwide cohort study including individuals (n=2 055 720) living in Finland between 1963 and 1990, who were alive at the end of the year they turned 25. Mental disorder diagnosis between ages 15 and 25 was used as the exposure. The level of education, employment status, annual wage or self‐employment earnings, and annual total income between ages 25 and 52 (measurement years 1988‐2015) were used as the outcomes. Results: All serious mental disorders were associated with increased risk of not being employed and not hav…
Does education protect against depression? Evidence from the Young Finns Study using Mendelian randomization
Using participants (N = 1733) drawn from the nationally representative longitudinal Young Finns Study (YFS) we estimate the effect of education on depressive symptoms. In 2007, when the participants were between 30 and 45 years old, they reported their depressive symptoms using a revised version of Beck's Depression Inventory. Education was measured using register information on the highest completed level of education in 2007, which was converted to years of education. To identify a causal relationship between education and depressive symptoms we use an instrumental variables approach (Mendelian randomization, MR) with a genetic risk score as an instrument for years of education. The genet…
Depressive symptoms and long-term income: The Young Finns Study
Abstract Background Higher depressive symptoms have been associated with lower future income. However, studies examining this issue have had limited follow-up times and have used self-reported measures of income. Also, possible confounders or mediators have not been accounted. Methods 971 women and 738 men were selected from the ongoing prospective Young Finns Study (YFS) that began in 1980. Depressive symptoms were measured in 1992 when participants were from 15 to 30 years old. Information on annual income and earnings from 1993 to 2010 were obtained from the Finnish Longitudinal Employer-Employee Data (FLEED) of Statistics Finland and linked to the YFS. Results Higher depressive symptoms…
Organizational justice, sickness absence and employee age
Purpose – The aim of this paper is to study age-related differences in how perceptions of two forms of organizational justice, i.e. procedural and interactional justice, are related to short (i.e. non-certified) spells and long (i.e. medically certified) spells of sickness absence. Design/methodology/approach – The authors conducted a study on a large sample of Finnish public sector employees (n=37,324), in which they matched employees' 2004 survey data with their records-based sick absences in 2005 and 2006. Findings – The results suggest that age moderates the association between perceptions of procedural justice and long sickness absences after controlling for gender, tenure, occupationa…
Personal need for structure and occupational strain: An investigation of structural models and interaction with job complexity
We explored the relation between personal need for structure (PNS), as a global construct and as divided into two components, and occupational strain. Analyses of questionnaire data from two independent samples of Finnish social and health care personnel (n = 3015 and n = 1840) suggest that a high personal desire for structure (DS-component) decreases the risk of psychological strain symptoms, whereas a personal tendency to express negative reactions when one is confronted with a lack of structure (RLS-component) increases this risk. The moderated effect of job context was then tested in a third sample of social and health care personnel (n = 734). The elevated risk of strain in high-RLS em…
Resident care needs and work stressors in special care units versus non-specialized long-term care units
Differences in how elderly residents' care needs affect staff's experiences of work stressors between special care units (SCUs) for dementia and psychiatric residents and non-SCUs were investigated. The data were drawn from 390 staff members in 38 long-term care SCUs, and 587 staff in 53 non-SCUs in Finland. Residents' care needs were based on the Resident Assessment Instrument (RAI) system measured by the Minimum Data Set 2.0. Work stressors (time-pressure and role-conflicts) were assessed with a staff survey questionnaire. Multiple-group regression analysis showed that residents' dependency in activities of daily living (ADL) was related to increased work stressors only in SCUs. A high pr…
Staff reports of psychosocial climate at school and adolescents' health, truancy and health education in Finland.
Background: Psychosocial climate at school reported by school personnel may be related to pupils’ reports of being heard at school, depression, physical and psychological symptoms, truancy and received health education. Methods: Cross-sectional study combining data from two independent surveys conducted between 2004 and 2005 in 136 public schools in Finland. The pupil sample comprised 11 583 boys and 12 706 girls from the eighth and ninth grades of lower secondary school and first and second grades of upper secondary school. A personnel survey ( n = 1946) was used to measure psychosocial climate indexed by trust and opportunity for participation, support for innovation, orientation towards…
Is It Good To Be Good? Dispositional Compassion and Health Behaviors
Background Despite the documented importance of dispositional compassions for a range of health-related outcomes, its role in predicting health behaviors remains unclear. Purpose This study examined the associations between dispositional compassion and three domains of health behavior, including physical activity, alcohol use, and smoking. Methods The participants (N = 1,279–1,913) were from the Finnish population-based Young Finns study. We collected self-reports of compassion in 1997 and 2011 and health behaviors in 2001, 2007, and 2011. In addition, an objective pedometer measure of physical activity was collected in 2011. Linear and logistic regression models were fitted to estimate the…