TY - JOUR T1 - Sexual and gender harassment and use of psychotropic medication among Swedish workers: a prospective cohort study JF - Occupational and Environmental Medicine JO - Occup Environ Med SP - 507 LP - 513 DO - 10.1136/oemed-2021-108087 VL - 79 IS - 8 AU - Katrina Julia Blindow AU - Johan Paulin AU - Linda Magnusson Hanson AU - Kristina Johnell AU - Anna Nyberg Y1 - 2022/08/01 UR - http://oem.bmj.com/content/79/8/507.abstract N2 - Objective To estimate the prospective association between the exposure to three types of gender-based violence and harassment (GBVH) and psychotropic medication.Methods Information on three measures of workplace GBVH—sexual harassment (1) from superiors or colleagues, (2) from others (eg, clients) and (3) gender harassment from superiors or colleagues—were retrieved from the biannual Swedish Work Environment Survey 2007–2013 (N=23 449), a representative sample of working 16–64 years old registered in Sweden. The survey answers were merged with data on antidepressants, hypnotics/sedatives and anxiolytics from the Swedish Prescribed Drug Register. Cox proportional hazards analyses with days to purchase as time scale and first instance of medicine purchase as failure event were fitted, adjusted for demographic and workplace factors.Results Workers who reported exposure to gender harassment only (HR 1.2, 95% CI 1.07 to 1.36), to sexual but not gender harassment (HR 1.21, 95% CI 1.04 to 1.40), or to gender and sexual harassment (HR 1.31, 95% CI 1.08 to 1.60) had an excess risk of psychotropics use in comparison to workers who reported neither of the exposures in the past 12 months. We found no interaction between the exposures and gender in the association with psychotropics use.Conclusions Exposure to sexual or gender harassment at the workplace may contribute to the development of mental disorders.Data may be obtained from a third party and are not publicly available. Due to legal restrictions, the data are not open to the public. To ensure the integrity and privacy of the study participants, publishing the data set underlying the study is not permitted. Data requests may be addressed to the SLOSH data manager, Constanze Leineweber at Constanze.leineweber@su.se. ER -