Occupational Psychiatry: An Historical Survey and Some Recent Researches

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
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.