Original researchPrevalence and Characteristics of Work Anxiety in Medical Rehabilitation Patients: A Cross-Sectional Observation Study
Section snippets
Methods
The study was performed in 3 German somatic rehabilitation clinics, that is, cardiology, orthopedic, and neurology units, between April 1, 2012 and March 31, 2014. Patients with somatic illness are sent to rehabilitation to prevent a chronic course of participation and work ability impairment. The aim is to restore or strengthen work ability and daily life participation. Rehabilitation as inpatient treatment lasts for 3 weeks and covers functional diagnostics, medical, sports, and cognitive and
Results
Table 1 presents the flow of patients over the steps of investigation. Most patients who scored on the work-anxiety screening interview but did not participate in the WAI had from clinical impression sufficient coping, and no clinically relevant work anxiety must be expected (64.4%, n=235+22, Table 1). However, a part must be expected to have serious problems with work anxiety and work avoidance (13.5%, n=17+37, Table 1). These patients could not be investigated further and are thus missing in
Discussion
Epidemiologically it has been found that 22% of patients with cardiac illness suffer from comorbid mental disorders. In a sample of musculoskeletal patients, the prevalence was 28.4%.16 As this present investigation focused on detecting work anxieties, we cannot give epidemiological data on the distribution of general (non–work-related) mental disorders over all initially investigated patients here. But, even more important concerning vocational integration-orientation, we can describe the
Conclusions
Our data show that about a quarter of patients in somatic rehabilitation are in need of additional differential diagnostic attention on work anxieties. To avoid long-term sick leave and deterioration of work-anxiety problems in the long run,24 it makes sense to start speaking about the topic “work” with these patients even parallel to a primarily indicated medical treatment.11
Understanding the differential diagnostic of a work-anxiety problem (ie, is it anxiety of insufficiency due to the
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Cited by (0)
Supported by the German Pension Fund (grant no. 8011 - 106 - 31/31.107).
Disclosures: none.