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Selected characteristics of people on long-term sick leave

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Suzanna Rose  and
Pamela J. Taylor
Suzanna Rose*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX
Pamela J. Taylor
Affiliation:
Institute of Psychiatry, London
*
∗Correspondence
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Abstract

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All personnel within one UK emergency service who had been identified during a six-month period as having been on sick leave for eight consecutive weeks or more were identified. Those consenting were interviewed once using both a semi-structured questionnaire and standardised instruments. There were three main objectives: to discover the nature of the presenting problem in terms of illness or injury, the extent to which psychological problems presented and the relative importance of general and/or traumatic stressors. The resulting sample of 17 people accounted for 2–3% of the workforce. Fifteen agreed to take part and 13 to full interview. of the 14 who completed the Hilton Drinking Behaviour Questionnaire 10 exceeded the threshold consistent with problem drinking. The reason for sick leave in all these cases was recorded as physical injury only.

Type
Original papers
Information
Psychiatric Bulletin , Volume 22 , Issue 7 , July 1998 , pp. 428 - 432
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 The Royal College of Psychiatrists

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