Occupational therapy (OT) is a global healthcare profession. It involves the use of assessment and intervention to develop, recover, or maintain the meaningful activities, or occupations, of individuals, groups, or communities. It is an independent health profession sometimes categorized as an allied health profession and consists of occupational therapists and occupational therapy assistants (OTA). OTs often work with people with mental health problems, disabilities, injuries, or impairments.
Ergophobia is an abnormal and persistent fear of work or fear of finding or losing employment. It is considered a form of social phobia or performance anxiety. The condition is recognised as a derivative of occupational burnout, derived from a persisting sense of pressure or excessive expectations in a workplace.
Compassion fatigue is a condition characterized by emotional and physical exhaustion leading to a diminished ability to empathize or feel compassion for others, often described as the negative cost of caring. It is sometimes referred to as secondary traumatic stress (STS). According to the Professional Quality of Life Scale, burnout and STS are interwoven elements of compassion fatigue.
A health professional , healthcare professional, or healthcare worker is a provider of health care treatment and advice based on formal training and experience. The field includes those who work as a nurse, physician, physician assistant, registered dietitian, veterinarian, veterinary technician, optometrist, pharmacist, pharmacy technician, medical assistant, physical therapist, occupational therapist, dentist, midwife, psychologist, or who perform services in allied health professions. Experts in public health and community health are also health professionals.
Occupational health psychology (OHP) is an interdisciplinary area of psychology that is concerned with the health and safety of workers. OHP addresses a number of major topic areas including the impact of occupational stressors on physical and mental health, the impact of involuntary unemployment on physical and mental health, work-family balance, workplace violence and other forms of mistreatment, psychosocial workplace factors that affect accident risk and safety, and interventions designed to improve and/or protect worker health. Although OHP emerged from two distinct disciplines within applied psychology, namely, health psychology and industrial and organizational psychology, for a long time the psychology establishment, including leaders of industrial/organizational psychology, rarely dealt with occupational stress and employee health, creating a need for the emergence of OHP. OHP has also been informed by other disciplines, including occupational medicine, sociology, industrial engineering, and economics, as well as preventive medicine and public health. OHP is thus concerned with the relationship of psychosocial workplace factors to the development, maintenance, and promotion of workers' health and that of their families. The World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization estimate that exposure to long working hours causes an estimated 745,000 workers to die from ischemic heart disease and stroke in 2016, mediated by occupational stress.
Work engagement is the "harnessing of organization member's selves to their work roles: in engagement, people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, emotionally and mentally during role performances". Three aspects of work motivation are cognitive, emotional and physical engagement.
Caregiver syndrome or caregiver stress is a condition that strongly manifests exhaustion, anger, rage, or guilt resulting from unrelieved caring for a chronically ill patient. This condition is not listed in the United States' Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, although the term is often used by many healthcare professionals in that country. The equivalent used in many other countries, the ICD-11, does include the condition.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), occupational burnout is a syndrome resulting from chronic work-related stress, with symptoms characterized by "feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one's job; and reduced professional efficacy".. While burnout may influence health and can be a reason for people contacting health services, it is not itself classified by the WHO as a medical condition or mental disorder. The World Health Organization states that "Burn-out refers specifically to phenomena in the occupational context and should not be applied to describe experiences in other areas of life."
Occupational stress is psychological stress related to one's job. Occupational stress refers to a chronic condition. Occupational stress can be managed by understanding what the stressful conditions at work are and taking steps to remediate those conditions. Occupational stress can occur when workers do not feel supported by supervisors or coworkers, feel as if they have little control over the work they perform, or find that their efforts on the job are incommensurate with the job's rewards. Occupational stress is a concern for both employees and employers because stressful job conditions are related to employees' emotional well-being, physical health, and job performance. A landmark study conducted by the World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization found that exposure to long working hours, which are theorized to operate through increased psycho-social occupational stress, is the occupational risk factor with the largest attributable burden of disease, according to these official estimates causing an estimated 745,000 workers to die from ischemic heart disease and stroke events in 2016.
The Maslach Burnout Inventory(MBI) is a psychological assessment instrument comprising 22 symptom items pertaining to occupational burnout. The original form of the MBI was developed by Christina Maslach and Susan E. Jackson with the goal of assessing an individual's experience of burnout. As underlined by Schaufeli (2003), a major figure of burnout research, "the MBI is neither grounded in firm clinical observation nor based on sound theorising. Instead, it has been developed inductively by factor-analysing a rather arbitrary set of items". The instrument takes 10 minutes to complete. The MBI measures three dimensions of burnout: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment.
Overwork is the expression used to define the cause of working too hard, too much, or too long. It can be also related to the act of working beyond one's strength or capacity, causing physical and/or mental distress in the process.
The effects of climate change on mental health and well-being can be rather negative, especially for vulnerable populations and those with pre-existing serious mental illness. There are three broad pathways by which these effects can take place: directly, indirectly or via awareness. The direct pathway includes stress related conditions being caused by exposure to extreme weather events, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Scientific studies have linked mental health outcomes to several climate-related exposures—heat, humidity, rainfall, drought, wildfires and floods. The indirect pathway can be via disruption to economic and social activities, such as when an area of farmland is less able to produce food. The third pathway can be of mere awareness of the climate change threat, even by individuals who are not otherwise affected by it.
A psychosocial hazard or work stressor is any occupational hazard related to the way work is designed, organized and managed, as well as the economic and social contexts of work. Unlike the other three categories of occupational hazard, they do not arise from a physical substance, object, or hazardous energy.
Mental health refers to the emotional well-being of a person. It is often viewed as an adult issue, but in fact, almost half of adolescents in the United States are affected by mental disorders, and about 20% of these are categorized as “severe.” Mental health issues can pose a huge problem for students in terms of academic and social success in school. Education systems around the world treat this topic differently, both directly through official policies and indirectly through cultural views on mental health and well-being. These curriculums are in place to effectively identify mental health disorders and treat it using therapy, medication, or other tools of alleviation.
Job strain is a form of psychosocial stress that occurs in the workplace. One of the most common forms of stress, it is characterized by a combination of low salaries, high demands, and low levels of control over things such as raises and paid time off. Stresses at work can be eustress, a positive type of stress, or distress, a negative type of stress. Job strain in the workplace has proved to result in poor psychological health, and eventually physical health. Job strain has been a recurring issue for years and affects men and women differently.
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the mental health of people around the world. The pandemic has caused widespread anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms. The pandemic has damaged social relationships, trust in institutions and in other people, has caused changes in work and income, and has imposed a substantial burden of anxiety and worry on the population. Women and young people face the greatest risk of depression and anxiety.
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted healthcare workers physically and psychologically. Healthcare workers are more vulnerable to COVID-19 infection than the general population due to frequent contact with infected individuals. Healthcare workers have been required to work under stressful conditions without proper protective equipment, and make difficult decisions involving ethical implications. Health and social systems across the globe are struggling to cope. The situation is especially challenging in humanitarian, fragile and low-income country contexts, where health and social systems are already weak. Services to provide sexual and reproductive health care risk being sidelined, which will lead to higher maternal mortality and morbidity.
In response to the COVID-19, schools in the U.S. began closing down in March 2020. This was a historic and unprecedented upheaval of the U.S. schooling system, that forced schools to a near shut-down. At the very peak of school closures, they affected 55.1 million students in 124,000 public and private U.S. schools. The effects of widespread school shut-downs were felt nationwide, and aggravated several social inequalities in gender, technology, educational achievement, and mental health.
Examination of mental health of agricultural workers in the United States shows that the agricultural workforce suffering from mental illnesses and disorders is widespread. A 2018 report highlighted the fact that male farmers, ranchers, and agricultural managers were nearly twice as likely to die by suicide as the general working population. Note, in 2020 male suicide rates are 3.88 times higher than female rates.
Psychosocial safety climate (PSC) is a term used in organisational psychology that refers to the shared belief held by workers that their psychological health and safety is protected and supported by senior management. PSC builds on other work stress theories and concerns the corporate climate for worker psychological health and safety. Studies have found that a favourable PSC is associated with low rates of absenteeism and high productivity, while a poor climate is linked to high levels of workplace stress and job dissatisfaction. PSC can be promoted by organisational practices, policies and procedures that prioritise the psychosocial safety and wellbeing of workers. The theory has implications for the design of workplaces for the best possible outcomes for both workers and management.
