In this large multinational, multicohort study, approximately one in ten employees reported being exposed to bullying or violence/threats of violence at work. Both men and women who were exposed to these severe social stressors were at a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes. The higher risk was consistent across cohorts and independent of follow-up length or the method of case ascertainment. When we adjusted for BMI, the associations were attenuated but remained statistically significant in the case of bullying and suggestive in the case of violence. These findings add to the previous cross-sectional study by Khubchandani et al that reported a risk estimate (OR 1.48 [95% CI 1.03, 2.15]) that is similar to our findings but is based on a less specific definition of bullying that included being harassed, threatened or bullied any time in the past 12 months [15].
We did not find a dose–response relationship trend for workplace bullying. The point estimate for those being frequently bullied was lower than those being occasionally bullied. This may be due to a very limited number of incident diabetes events in the frequently bullied group generating a very wide confidence interval. However, we did not find a dose–response relationship for workplace violence either. Occupations with frequent client contact can be a proxy of frequent workplace violence [23]; however, the point estimate was similar between occupations with frequent client contact and those without. A possible explanation for the lack of a dose–response relationship here could be a protective effect from general expectations and/or training prior to workplace violence among employees in occupations with frequent client contact [26]. It may also be attributable to cognitive adaption including finding meaning, enhancing self and gaining mastery [27] following frequent exposure.
Bullying vs violence
Our results suggest that while both bullying and violence represent negative interpersonal relationships they most probably constitute different concepts, with only 2–4% of participants reporting being exposed to both, and very poor statistical agreement indicating that bullying and violence are two distinct social stressors. Harassment and bullying refer to psychological aggression, including behaviours such as unfair criticisms, humiliating work tasks, isolation, ignorance and spreading rumours [3]. Violence or threats of violence on the other hand are more likely to be understood as physical violence or verbal threats relating to physical violence [28], and the actions included can be exemplified as pushing, kicking and screaming [29]. There can be situations where behaviours displaying bullying and violent characteristics overlap, especially when the negative behaviour of concern has been observed to persist and be repeated over a long period [3]. However, in most situations, bullying at work is often characterised by negative behaviours from colleagues and supervisors, sometimes also from clients [30], whereas the overwhelming proportion of violence at work is derived from clients, students, customers, patients, etc [29]. Hence, workplace bullying and workplace violence seem to be distinct behaviours and, consequently, their induced emotions can be different. However, the associated behavioural appraisals and physiological reactions may be similar and may explain the comparable associations with risk of diabetes observed in the present study.
Plausible pathways
Being bullied is regarded as a severe social stressor that may activate the stress response system and lead to a range of downstream biological processes that may contribute towards the risk of diabetes [31]. In agreement with this, bullying at work has, for example, been found to be related to a higher level of saliva dehydroepiandrosterone sulphate [32], although no increase in saliva cortisol has been documented [33] and there is no clear finding from longitudinal studies on stress biomarkers [34]. Nevertheless, these hormones may work together in affecting cellular activities and metabolic, cardiovascular and immune variables [15, 35]. Metabolic changes and obesity are also possible mechanisms underlying the observed higher risk of type 2 diabetes associated with both bullying and violence, as stress responses may be related to the endocrine regulation of appetite [36]. In the present study, the relationships between bullying and violence and type 2 diabetes attenuated after adjustment for baseline BMI, which can either be due to the fact that obese employees are more likely to be targets for workplace bullying or violence or that exposed employees are more likely to gain weight and become obese. The first explanation (i.e. that obesity leads to bullying) was, however, not supported in a sensitivity analysis presented in a previous paper on bullying and cardiovascular disease based on data from the FPS study, where the authors did not find an association between baseline BMI and incident workplace bullying [37]. On the other hand, it is likely that both workplace bullying and violence can induce comfort eating behaviour [12] or increase the risk of experiencing negative emotions [8, 26, 38], and further contribute to weight gain and subsequent development of type 2 diabetes, making the causal pathway very plausible.
Methodological considerations
The exposure measurements differed slightly between the studies, especially the measurements from FPS, as in this study bullying is defined as ‘currently being bullied’ rather than bullying experienced in the past 12 months. Furthermore, workplace bullying was self-reported without providing a definition, which did not reflect the formal definition of persistent or repeated events [3]. According to a meta-analysis on measurement of workplace bullying in Nordic countries [4], the provision of a definition did not impact prevalence, presumably because the concept of bullying at schools and workplaces is well established. However, in this study, given the subjectivity of solely using a self-reporting method, it is possible that our results are, to some extent, affected by exposure misclassification. Furthermore, workplace bullying and violence were only measured at baseline, ignoring the possibility of changes in exposure status over time [39], which may have diluted our results.
The incidence of type 2 diabetes was smaller in SWES95-01 compared with the other cohorts. This difference may be mainly ascribed to the fact that SWES95-01 could not be linked to the medication register. However, a meta-analysis is a robust tool with which to incorporate such variations. It is reassuring that although the association in FPS is possibly diluted by using a narrower exposure window it showed a similar risk estimate and direction as the other cohorts.
Type 2 diabetes was ascertained differently across countries and at different historical time points, leading to some degree of misclassification. We chose to use the most comprehensive definition in each study to reduce outcome misclassification, which came at the cost of direct comparability in incidence rates across studies. However, when standardising case ascertainment across the studies in the sensitivity analyses, we found no obvious heterogeneity for the risk estimates dependent on case ascertainment method, suggesting that such misclassification is not a major source of bias. In addition, we have considered several important confounders. However, in observational settings, unmeasured confounders are unavoidable, e.g. personality and genetic factors. Thus, our results should be interpreted with caution.
To the best of our knowledge, no previous longitudinal studies have addressed the relationships between workplace bullying and workplace violence and type 2 diabetes. All the analyses were done under the counterfactual framework, ensuring a more straightforward interpretation of the results. Further, we applied the best available outcome measurement, linking to nationwide registries to allow for a nearly complete follow-up and to minimise misclassification of other diseases. Our large sample size and long follow-up period provided sufficient statistical power to assess total and sex-specific effects, and to conduct relevant sensitivity analyses adjusted for different variables and case ascertainment.
In conclusion, we have shown a moderate and robust association between workplace bullying and violence and the development of type 2 diabetes. Both bullying and violence or threats of violence are common in the workplace. Research on bullying and violence prevention policies with workplaces as the target are warranted to determine whether these policies could be effective means of reducing the incidence of type 2 diabetes. Further study of possible pathways, for example through weight gain, negative emotions and the physiological stress response, will be crucial in providing an understanding of the causal mechanisms, as well as developing more cost-effective interventions with surrogate outcomes.