Workplace violence or bullying linked to higher risk of cardiovascular problems: Study

Workplace stress is related to a higher risk of cardiovascular disease in a dose-response manner, in other words, the greater the exposure to bullying or violence, the greater the risk of cardiovascular disease.

Editorial Team | Published: November 19, 2018 2:41 pm

A new study observed that people who are bullied at work or experience violence at work are at higher risk of brain and heart blood vessel problems. According to the News-Medical report, the study has been published in the European Heart Journal today i.e. on Monday.

The researchers say their results are strong and have important implications for employers and national governments, although the study is observational and, therefore, cannot show that workplace bullying or violence cause cardiovascular problems, only that there is an association.

Ms Tianwei Xu, a PhD student at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, who led the study, reportedly said: “If there is a causal link between bullying or violence at work and cardiovascular disease, then the removal of workplace bullying would mean we could avoid five per cent of all cardiovascular cases, and the eradication of violence at work would avoid more than three per cent of all cases.”

In Denmark and Sweden, the researchers looked at data from 79,201 working men and women, aged between 18 to 65, with no history of cardiovascular disease (CVD), who were participants in three studies that started between 1995 and 2011; the participants have been followed up ever since. The participants were asked about bullying and violence in the workplace and how frequently they experienced each of them when they joined the studies. Information on the number of cases of heart and brain blood vessel disease and deaths was obtained from nationwide registries.

Ms Xu and her colleagues also took account of other factors that could affect whether or not the participants were affected by CVD, such as alcohol consumption, smoking, body mass index, mental disorders and other pre-existing health conditions, occupation and shift working.

In the past year, 9 per cent of participants reported being bullied at work and 13 per cent reported experiencing violence or threats of violence at work. After adjusting for marital status, age, sex, country of birth, and level of education, the researchers found that those who have experienced violence or bullied at work had a 59 per cent and 25 per cent higher risk of CVD respectively compared to people who were not exposed to bullying or violence. The greater the risk of CVD, the more bullying or violence that was encountered.

Reportedly, Ms Xu said: “Workplace bullying and workplace violence are distinct social stressors at work. Only 10-14 per cent of those exposed to at least one type of exposure was suffering from the other at the same time. These stressful events are related to a higher risk of cardiovascular disease in a dose-response manner – in other words, the greater the exposure to bullying or violence, the greater the risk of cardiovascular disease.

From this study, they cannot conclude that there is a causal relation between workplace bullying or workplace violence and cardiovascular disease, but they provide empirical evidence in support of such a causal relation, especially given the plausible biological pathway between workplace major stressors and cardiovascular disease. This is further supported by the dose-response trend and the robustness of the results in various sensitivity analyses. Experimental studies on violence and bullying would be highly unethical and our study thus provides the best evidence of this association.

Published: November 19, 2018 2:41 pm

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