Occupational Psychiatry: An Historical Survey and Some Recent Researches

Abstract

The relations between Psychiatry and Occupation are considerable and complex. This is the case whether we consider psychiatry as limited (Curran, 1952) and thus approach the problem through the individual patient and his work, past, present and future, or less limited and thus concerned with industry and group adjustment. In reality both approaches deal with essentially the same basic problem which is the biological adaptation of man to his occupation, or to earning a living. Such work phases form an integral part of man's very existence, whether he works to live, or lives to work. Interest in the maintenance of health through prevention of occupational hazards has developed rapidly in this century, stimulated by war stresses, defence programmes and economic cataclysms. The struggle for our industrial survival has focused more than our interest, as psychiatrists; but extravagant offers of industrial consultancy, of trying to teach where little knowledge is yet available are patently dangerous. Industry, like society, has often been led to expect too much, and too soon, from our as yet embryonic facts, experiments and principles in this field.

The postwar occupational adjustment of emotionally disturbed soldiers.

“…This does not imply that the former neurotic is necessarily a poor worker. The limited evidence we have suggests that as a group neurotics are likely to perform just as well as other employees, at least in lower level jobs (1). It seems probable, however, that they do typically lack whatever qualities make for placement or continued employment in supervisory and skilled positions.…”

Do organic solvents ‘cause’ dementia?

“…Unfortunately, psychiatric disability caused by occupational factors has not proved so readily investigated; indeed 'industrial psychiatry', once SO potentially fruitful (Lewis, 1942;Markowe, 1953), has all but disappeared as a speciality (Murphy, 1973). The particular difficulties of nosology and case definition in epidemiological studies, which have received so much attention in the psychiatric literature (for example Kendall, 1976), are probably central to this decline by making psychiatric diagosis apparently more 'imprecise' than organic diagnosis.…”

The effect of a course in psychology on the attitudes of research and development supervisors.

“…Lecture 3. A brief survey of studies dealing with the relationship between emotional factors and performance was followed by a more detailed analysis of the Markowe (1953) and Miner and Anderson (1958) researches. There was also some discussion of various psychosomatic disorders based on studies presented in Life Stress and Bodily Disease (Association for Research in Nervous and Mental Dis-ease, 1950), of alcoholism, and of methods of identifying emotional pathology.…”