Recurrence of sickness absence due to depression after returning to work at a Japanese IT company

There have been few epidemiological studies on recurrent sickness absence due to depression after returning to work (RTW). The objective of this study was to investigate the prognosis of workers who are RTW with depression in a Japanese company. This study employed a descriptive epidemiology study design. Subjects of this study were 540 employees who worked full-time and were registered in the Health Data System and returned to work from April 2002 to March 2008 after their first leave of absence due to depression. We investigated the recurrence of sickness absence due to depression after returning to work using the Kaplan-Meier survival curve method. During the 8.5 yr follow-up period, almost half of the RTW employees experienced recurrent sickness absence. There was a steep increase in recurrent rates the first two years after RTW, and 85.2% of total recurrence of sickness absence had occurred within three years after the index episode.