PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Campbell, Desmond AU - Green, Michael James AU - Davies, Neil AU - Demou, Evangelia AU - Howe, Laura D AU - Harrison, Sean AU - Smith, Daniel J AU - Howard, David M AU - McIntosh, Andrew M AU - Munafò, Marcus AU - Katikireddi, Srinivasa Vittal TI - Effects of depression on employment and social outcomes: a Mendelian randomisation study AID - 10.1136/jech-2021-218074 DP - 2022 Jun 01 TA - Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health PG - 563--571 VI - 76 IP - 6 4099 - http://jech.bmj.com/content/76/6/563.short 4100 - http://jech.bmj.com/content/76/6/563.full SO - J Epidemiol Community Health2022 Jun 01; 76 AB - Background Depression is associated with socioeconomic disadvantage. However, whether and how depression exerts a causal effect on employment remains unclear. We used Mendelian randomisation (MR) to investigate whether depression affects employment and related outcomes in the UK Biobank dataset.Methods We selected 227 242 working-age participants (40–64 in men, 40–59 years for women) of white British ethnicity/ancestry with suitable genetic data in the UK Biobank study. We used 30 independent genetic variants associated with depression as instruments. We conducted observational and two-sample MR analyses. Outcomes were employment status (employed vs not, and employed vs sickness/disability, unemployment, retirement or caring for home/family); weekly hours worked (among employed); Townsend Deprivation Index; highest educational attainment; and household income.Results People who had experienced depression had higher odds of non-employment, sickness/disability, unemployment, caring for home/family and early retirement. Depression was associated with reduced weekly hours worked, lower household income and lower educational attainment, and increased deprivation. MR analyses suggested depression liability caused increased non-employment (OR 1.16, 95% CI 1.06 to 1.26) and sickness/disability (OR 1.56, 95% CI 1.34 to 1.82), but was not causal for caring for home/family, early retirement or unemployment. There was little evidence from MR that depression affected weekly hours worked, educational attainment, household income or deprivation.Conclusions Depression liability appears to cause increased non-employment, particularly by increasing disability. There was little evidence of depression affecting early retirement, hours worked or household income, but power was low. Effective treatment of depression might have important economic benefits to individuals and society.Data may be obtained from a third party and are not publicly available. Access to the dataset upon which this study is based must be sought from UK Biobank. The code used in the study analyses is available upon request from the authors.