Labour market trajectories following sickness absence due to self-reported all cause morbidity—a longitudinal study

Abstract Background To investigate differences in return to work (RTW) and employment trajectories in individuals on sick leave for either mental health reasons or other health related reasons. Methods This study was based on 2036 new sickness absence cases who completed a questionnaire on social characteristics, expectations for RTW and reasons for sickness absence. They were divided into two exposure groups according to their self-reported sickness absence reason: mental health reasons or other health reasons. The outcome was employment status during the following 51 weeks and was measured both as time-to-event analysis and with sequence analysis. Results Individuals with mental health reasons for sickness absence had a higher risk of not having returned to work (RR 0.87 (0.80;0.93)). Adjusting for gender, age, education and employment did not change the estimate, however, after adding RTW expectations to the model, the excess risk was no longer present (RR 1.01 (0.95;1.08)). In relation to the sequence analysis, individuals with mental health related absence had significantly higher odds of being in the sickness absence cluster and significantly lower odds for being in the fast RTW cluster, but when adjusting for RTW expectations, the odds were somewhat attenuated and no longer significant. Conclusions Employees on sick leave due to self-reported mental health problems spent more weeks in sickness absence and temporary benefits and had a higher risk of not having returned to work within a year compared to employees on sick leave due to other health reasons. The difference could be explained by their lower RTW expectations at baseline. This emphasises the need to develop suitable and specific interventions to facilitate RTW for this group of sickness absentees

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements