Absenteeism due to mental and behavioral disorder in employees of a federal university

Mental and behavioral disorders (MBD) are one of the main causes of absence from work in Brazil and worldwide.

To analyze the prevalence of absence from work according to the International Classification of Diseases, 10th revision, with stratification of disease defined as "Mental and Behavioral Disorders", in permanent employees of the Federal University of Ouro Preto and its relationships with sociodemographic and occupational determinants, during the period from 2011 to 2019.

An epidemiological, descriptive, and analytical study, with a cross-sectional design and quantitative approach was conducted using primary and secondary data. The population consisted of federal public sector workers who were granted ML to treat their own health during a 9-year period. Analyses were performed using descriptive and bivariate statistics. The Wilcoxon (Mann-Whitney) and Poisson tests were used to assess the existence of associations between variables.

733 medical records of employees eligible according to the inclusion criteria were analyzed. There was a rising trend in ML rates over the 9-year period. Of the sample, 23.2% (n = 170) were absent from work due to mental and behavioral disorders - females accounted for 57.6% and administrative technicians in education for 62.3%. In the multivariate analysis (Poisson test), only the outcome "time of first ML due to mental and behavioral disorders" was associated with the variable "time working at the Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto".

The high prevalence of mental and behavioral disorders found in this investigation is an alert to the magnitude of the problem, highlighting the urgency of implementing measures to detect psychosocial risk factors, whether associated with work or not.