Health Discovery: Bosses Who Can Make You Sick

In The Devil Wears Prada, Meryl Streep epitomized the demon boss. In reality, could a bad boss be the death of you?

For a decade starting in 1992, Swedish researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm tracked more than 3,000 men with an average age of 42 and better than average access to health care. Participants rated their bosses’ behavior on 10 measures, including: “My boss gives me the information I need” and “I have sufficient power in relation to my responsibilities.”

By the study’s end, 74 men had suffered heart attacks or other serious cardiac events. The lower an employer’s leadership score, the higher a worker’s risk, the study found.The chance for heart attack also increased with the number of years of exposure to the bad boss.

Should you flee a bad boss on the basis of this one observational study? No, says Steven Nissen, M.D., chairman of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic. “The idea that chronic stress is a cause for heart disease has not been validated very well scientifically,” he says. The study appeared online in the Nov. 27 Journal of Occupational Environmental Medicine.

Susan Morse, formerly with the Washington Post, writes about health and consumer issues.