Early retirement from work among employees with a diagnosis of personality disorder compared to anxiety and depressive disorders.
OBJECTIVE
Risk of retirement from work before statutory retirement age among employees with personality disorders is unknown.


METHODS
We used diagnoses of awarded medical rehabilitations and hospitalisations to select two clinical cohorts from a population of 151,618 employees: participants in rehabilitation (total N=1942, 233 personality disorder, 419 anxiety disorder and 1290 depression cases) and hospitalised patients (N=1333, 354, 126 and 853, respectively). Early retirement from work was tracked through national registers during a period of 5 years. Cox proportional hazard models were used to examine the association of diagnostic groups with risk of early retirement.


RESULTS
In models adjusted for age, sex and socioeconomic position, the relative risk of early retirement for patients with personality disorders was 3.5-fold (95% CI 2.1 to 5.8) in the rehabilitation cohort and 2.3-fold (95% CI 1.6 to 3.5) in the hospital cohort compared with anxiety disorders. The corresponding hazard ratios of early retirement for personality disorders compared with depressive disorders were 1.1 (95% CI 0.8-1.5) and 1.7 (95% CI 1.4-2.1), respectively.


CONCLUSIONS
Personality disorders increase the risk of early retirement at least to an equal extent as depression and more than twice that of anxiety disorders.
Korkeila
J
J
Department of psychiatry, University of Turku, Kunnallissairaalantie 20, 20700 Turku, Finland. jyrkor@utu.fi
Oksanen
T
T
Virtanen
M
M
Salo
P
P
Nabi
H
H
Pentti
J
J
Vahtera
J
J
Kivimäki
M
M
D000328:Adult; D001008:Anxiety Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D016009:Chi-Square Distribution; D015331:Cohort Studies; D016001:Confidence Intervals; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D004651:Employment / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D005387:Finland; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010554:Personality Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D016016:Proportional Hazards Models; D012179:Retirement / Q000523:psychology*; D012307:Risk Factors; D013997:Time Factors