Sickness absence rates in NHS England staff during the COVID-19 pandemic: Insights from multivariate regression and time series modelling
Fig 7
SARIMA models of mental health-related sickness absence.
(a) Time series showing the observed trend (solid black line) and predictions. We used a SARIMA model trained with 2015–2019 to predict the 2020–2021 trend (dashed blue line, with the light blue shaded region indicating prediction interval). Another model was trained with 2015–2021 data to predict the 2022 rates (dashed red line, with the light red shaded region indicating prediction interval). (b) Barplot showing the difference between the observed trend and the predictions from the SARIMA model trained on 2015–2019 data (shaded blue bars). Bars above the horizontal zero line (solid black) are months where the observed trend was higher than the model predictions. The dotted line indicates the difference between the observed trend and the 95% prediction interval.