MRC Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
Centre Metices, Université libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium.
PLoS Med. 2023 Apr 27;20(4):e1004214. doi: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1004214. eCollection 2023 Apr.
Home working has increased since the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic's onset with concerns that it may have adverse health implications. We assessed the association between home working and social and mental wellbeing among the employed population aged 16 to 66 through harmonised analyses of 7 UK longitudinal studies.
We estimated associations between home working and measures of psychological distress, low life satisfaction, poor self-rated health, low social contact, and loneliness across 3 different stages of the pandemic (T1 = April to June 2020 -first lockdown, T2 = July to October 2020 -eased restrictions, T3 = November 2020 to March 2021 -second lockdown) using modified Poisson regression and meta-analyses to pool results across studies. We successively adjusted the model for sociodemographic characteristics (e.g., age, sex), job characteristics (e.g., sector of activity, pre-pandemic home working propensities), and pre-pandemic health. Among respectively 10,367, 11,585, and 12,179 participants at T1, T2, and T3, we found higher rates of home working at T1 and T3 compared with T2, reflecting lockdown periods. Home working was not associated with psychological distress at T1 (RR = 0.92, 95% CI = 0.79 to 1.08) or T2 (RR = 0.99, 95% CI = 0.88 to 1.11), but a detrimental association was found with psychological distress at T3 (RR = 1.17, 95% CI = 1.05 to 1.30). Study limitations include the fact that pre-pandemic home working propensities were derived from external sources, no information was collected on home working dosage and possible reverse association between change in wellbeing and home working likelihood.
No clear evidence of an association between home working and mental wellbeing was found, apart from greater risk of psychological distress during the second lockdown, but differences across subgroups (e.g., by sex or level of education) may exist. Longer term shifts to home working might not have adverse impacts on population wellbeing in the absence of pandemic restrictions but further monitoring of health inequalities is required.
自 2019 年冠状病毒病（COVID-19）大流行开始以来，居家办公有所增加，人们担心这可能对健康产生不利影响。我们通过对 7 项英国纵向研究的协调分析，评估了居家办公与 16 至 66 岁就业人群的社会和心理健康之间的关联。
我们使用修正泊松回归和荟萃分析来估计居家办公与心理困扰、生活满意度低、自我报告健康状况差、社会接触少和孤独感等措施在大流行的 3 个不同阶段（T1=2020 年 4 月至 6 月-第一次封锁、T2=2020 年 7 月至 10 月-放宽限制、T3=2020 年 11 月至 2021 年 3 月-第二次封锁）之间的关联。我们分别对 10367、11585 和 12179 名参与者在 T1、T2 和 T3 时的模型进行了社会人口统计学特征（例如年龄、性别）、工作特征（例如活动部门、大流行前居家办公倾向）和大流行前健康状况的调整。在 T1 和 T3 时，与 T2 相比，居家办公的比例更高，反映了封锁期。T1（RR=0.92，95%CI=0.79 至 1.08）或 T2（RR=0.99，95%CI=0.88 至 1.11）时，居家办公与心理困扰无关，但 T3 时与心理困扰呈不利关联（RR=1.17，95%CI=1.05 至 1.30）。研究局限性包括大流行前居家办公倾向是从外部来源得出的，没有收集居家办公剂量的信息，也没有收集幸福感变化与居家办公可能性之间的可能反向关联。
除了在第二次封锁期间心理困扰的风险增加外，没有发现居家办公与心理健康之间有明显的关联，但可能存在亚组之间的差异（例如，性别或教育水平）。如果没有大流行限制，居家办公的长期转变可能不会对人群健康产生不利影响，但需要进一步监测健康不平等情况。
