Joint effects: Where and How the Frequency of Cannabis Use Shapes the Relationship between Employee Mental Health and Sickness Absenteeism

Abstract

This study explores how the frequency of employee cannabis use moderates the relationships between mental health and legal status of cannabis in predicting employee sickness absence. Analyzing a sample of 1,199 employed young adults in the United States from the most recent wave of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID): Transition into Adulthood Supplement (TAS), this study estimates zero-inflated Poisson regressions to predict the number of sickness absences employees reported over the past year. The results indicated that the legal status of cannabis interacted with frequency of cannabis use and depression to predict employee sickness absence. However, supplemental analyses examining sex indicated that the legal status of cannabis interacted with the frequency of cannabis use and anxiety to predict sickness absence. Our study contributes to the literature by moving beyond the main effects of substance use on sickness absence to explore how individual and environmental characteristics interact with frequency of cannabis use to predict sickness absence, using a nationally representative sample of recent data.