Ebook: Handbook of Work Disability: Prevention and Management

​This book addresses the developing field of Work Disability Prevention. Work disability does not only involve occupational disorders originating from the work or at the workplace, but addresses work absenteeism originating from any disorder or accident. This topic has become of primary importance due to the huge compensation costs and health issues involved. For employers it is a unique burden and in many countries compensation is not even linked to the cause of the disorder. In the past twenty years, studies have accumulated which emphasize the social causes of work disability. Governments and NGOs such as the World Bank, the International Labor Organization, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development have produced alarming reports on the extent of this problem for developed and developing countries. However, no comprehensive book is presently available to help them address this emerging field where new knowledge should induce new ways of management.​

As work is recognized as beneficial to people's well-being, its absence is being considered in greater detail. Increasingly, work disability is being understood as a public health issue, and work disability prevention is gaining strength as an aspect of occupational health.

The Handbook of Work Disability overviews this emerging field in accessible and practical fashion. This timely volume offers current theory for understanding the determinants of work disability (regardless of illness or injury that keeps individuals from the workplace), and a template for interventions that benefit both patient and other stakeholders. Experts across multiple fields examine the lives of work disabled patients, analyze the societal and workplace burden of work disability, and review bedrock concepts of the disability and its prevention. Featuring assessment tools, evidence-based intervention strategies, and insights into disorder-specific populations, this is information useful to the practicing clinician, the researcher, and the trainee. Included in the Handbook:

• Pain, chronicity, and disability.
• Measuring outcomes in work disability prevention.
• The influence of care providers on work disability.
• Psychosocial factors for disability and return to work.
• Core components of return-to-work interventions.
• Plus issue-specific chapters on low back pain, TBI, mental illness, and cancer.

The Handbook of Work Disability is a definitive reference for psychologists, therapists, and rehabilitation professionals, as well as administrators, researchers, and students.