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INTRODUCTION
Stress related illness is an increasing
problem in the work place. A recent Gallup Poll of 201
U.S. corporations revealed the extent of this problem,
showing significant percentages of the work force affected
by disorders ranging from fatigue and difficulty concentrating,
to substance abuse problems, to actual mental illness.
In these companies, nearly 60% of all managers felt
that stress related illness was pervasive among their
workers and decreased productivity at an estimated cost
of 16 days of sick leave and $8,000.00 per person per
year.
Among stress related illnesses,
depression or depressive disorders are estimated alone
to cost the American work place a staggering 43 billion
dollars per year, including the cost for absenteeism,
lost productivity, treatment and rehabilitation, and
loss of earnings from accidents and suicide. In addition,
work place violence has increased dramatically in the
last fifteen years with homicide accounting for 17%
of all occupational fatalities. Furthermore, claims
of physical and sexual assault, verbal threats or intimidation,
and harassment have risen at alarming rates. In conjunction
with these claims, the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress
disorder has emerged as validation of the harm suffered,
and is probably one of the most popular diagnoses in
litigation today. Finally, these stress related illnesses
do not even begin to take into account physical disabilities
such as low-back pain or repetitive motion injury which
can have strong psychological and psycho social influences.
While it is clear that stress related
illness will affect a worker's productivity and so is
a concern to the employer, a number of other questions
need to be answered which are common to all industrial
stress claims: Is the stress related illness caused
by employment or merely incidental to it? What conditions
of employment give rise to stress related illness? What
special obligations does a stress related illness create
for the employer? How do we define what stress related
illness really is? How do we measure impairment and/or
disability?
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