Svava Dögg Jónsdóttir, Unnur Anna Valdimarsdóttir, Þórhildur Halldórsdóttir, Thor Aspelund, Edda Björk Þórðardóttir and Arna Hauksdóttir
Introduction: Workplace sexual violence has been associated with negative mental and physical health outcomes among survivors. Most previous research relies on self-reported outcomes while little is known on clinically confirmed conditions and medication use. This study aims to estimate the association between workplace sexual violence and incident psychotropic and analgesic medication use.
Methods: Data come from baseline assessment of the Stress-And-Gene-Analysis (SAGA) study including a nationally representative cohort of 30,403 women living in Iceland, aged 18-69 years. Information on workplace sexual violence (‘never’ or ‘ever’ exposed) and demographics (e.g., age, education) was self-reported while information on antidepressants, anxiolytics, hypnotics/sedatives, and analgesics was obtained by record linkage to the Icelandic Prescription Medicine Register. Women with a history of prior use of these medications were excluded. Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals comparing exposure to workplace sexual violence to non-exposure for medication use, adjusting for potential confounders.
Results: We followed 9,460 in the psychotropic analysis, and 7,589 in the analgesics analysis for a maximum of 4.8 years. Preliminary results indicate that women who reported exposure to workplace sexual violence were at increased risk of incident psychotropic medication (HR=1.21, 95% CI=1.11-1.32) and analgesic medication use (HR=1.08, 95% CI=1.01-1.16) compared to women without such exposure.
Conclusions: These preliminary results indicate that exposure to workplace sexual violence is associated with psychotropic and analgesic medication use among women, suggesting a link of such exposure to objective measures of mental and physical disorders.
