Bad Bosses Are Hard on the Heart

"Workers with medically certified absence for mental diagnoses should be considered a population at a higher risk of fatal disease," Ferrie concluded. "These diagnoses include mental health problems, often viewed as the diagnosis most likely to be used as an excuse for skiving."

But Dr. David L. Katz, director of the Prevention Research Center at Yale University School of Medicine noted again that this research did not prove causality.

"It may be that workers who are ill are less apt to be satisfied," Katz said. "But it is not unreasonable that dissatisfaction at work could translate into great risk for ill health, and even premature death," he said.

It stands to reason that how we interact with others in the workplace is important to our health and quality of life, Katz said. "Given how much time we spend at work, relationships there clearly count. Intervention studies that aim to optimize the interaction between employee and manager and test for health outcomes would clearly make sense," he said.

More information

For more on work stress, visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention .