Welfare Benefits in Functional Somatic Disorders

University of Aarhus

Status: Completed

Conditions: Medically Unexplained Syndrome; Irritable Bowel Syndrome; Fibromyalgia; Somatoform Disorders; Bodily Distress Syndrome; Chronic Fatigue Syndrome; Medically Unexplained Symptoms

Study type: Observational

Funder types: Other; NETWORK

Identifiers

NCT05611606

DanFunD welfare benefits

Details and patient eligibility

About

The objective of this observational study is to estimate the number of weeks of welfare benefits, i.e. sickness benefit, unemployment benefit and social assistance, for individuals with functional somatic disorders and compare them to

1. healthy individuals, and
2. individuals with severe physical disease.

Full description

Functional somatic disorders (FSD) are common conditions characterized by persistent patterns of physical symptoms that cannot be better explained by other physical or mental conditions (1). The conditions may cause severe impairment for the patients who present with reduced physical and mental health, lower social status, and poor labour market association (2-4).

In 2005, it was estimated that FSD accounted for 3% of hospitalizations and 10-20% of health care expenses in Denmark (5), and a newer Danish primary care study has shown patients with FSD to have higher annual health care costs compared with conventionally-defined conditions (6). In other countries, studies in clinical samples have shown increased direct and indirect health care costs of FSD (7, 8) showing a dose-response relationship with severity of the FSD (9). These studies into highly selected clinical samples may induce high risk of selection bias, and studies including random selected general population samples are therefore needed. One Canadian population-based study on health care costs of children, adolescents, and young adults with FSD also found increased health care use and costs for this group (10). Studies investigating the socioeconomic burden in terms of welfare benefits of FSD in an adult random sample from the general population are, however, lacking.

Objective To estimate the number of weeks of welfare benefits, i.e. sickness benefit, unemployment benefit and social assistance, for individuals with FSD and compare them to individuals without FSD and individuals with severe physical disease.

Enrollment: 9,656 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18 to 76 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• None

Exclusion criteria

• Not born in Denmark
• Not being a Danish citizen
• Pregnancy

Trial design

9,656 participants in 1 patient group

DanFunD baseline

Description:

Data from the DanFunD baseline cohort will be included (11). It comprises a total of 9,656 (33.7% of the invited participants) men and women aged 18-76 years born in Denmark and living in the Western part of greater Copenhagen. Individuals with FSD are identified by means of self-reported questionnaires (n=9,656) (2) and diagnostic research interviews (n=1,590) (12). Participants with FSD will be defined as follows: * FSD operationalised by the Bodily Distress Syndrome single- and multi-organ type will be defined with both self-reported questionnaires (14) and diagnostic interviews (3) * Three functional somatic syndromes, i.e. irritable bowel (15), chronic widespread pain (16), and chronic fatigue (17) will be defined with questionnaires. Severe physical disease will be defined as having received at least one of the following five diagnoses: Cancer, stroke, myocardial infarction, other heart disease, and obstructive pulmonary disease.