Psychosocial factors at work, such as stress, job satisfaction, and social support, can significantly impact health. They can contribute to the causation and aggravation of diseases and affect the outcomes of curative and rehabilitative measures.
This book presents research and best practice examples from the Asia Pacific region to address the gap in global expertise on psychosocial factors at work. It explores practices in the region that promote healthy workplaces and workers by presenting research from around the globe on issues such as telework, small and medium-sized enterprises, disaster-struck areas, suicide prevention, and workplace client violence. It discusses practical, multidisciplinary efforts to address worker occupational health. Further, it explores psychosocial risk and prevention, as well as the significant role of cultural variations and practices in the diverse range of countries covered.
The United States is among the wealthiest nations in the world, but it is far from the healthiest. Although life expectancy and survival rates in the United States have improved dramatically over the past century, Americans live shorter lives and experience more injuries and illnesses than people in other high-income countries. The U.S. health disadvantage cannot be attributed solely to the adverse health status of racial or ethnic minorities or poor people: even highly advantaged Americans are in worse health than their counterparts in other, "peer" countries. In light of the new and growing evidence about the U.S. health disadvantage, the National Institutes of Health asked the National Research Council (NRC) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to convene a panel of experts to study the issue. The Panel on Understanding Cross-National Health Differences Among High-Income Countries examined whether the U.S. health disadvantage exists across the life span, considered potential explanations, and assessed the larger implications of the findings. U.S. Health in International Perspective presents detailed evidence on the issue, explores the possible explanations for the shorter and less healthy lives of Americans than those of people in comparable countries, and recommends actions by both government and nongovernment agencies and organizations to address the U.S. health disadvantage.
This book is a valuable, comprehensive and unique reference text on Psychosocial Safety Climate (PSC), a new work stress theory. It proposes a new PSC theory concerning the corporate climate for workers’ psychological health, its origins and implications for work stress, and provides a critique of current research and theories. It provides a comprehensive review of all PSC studies to date. The chapters discuss state-of-the-art empirical evidence testing PSC theory in relation to management roles, organisational resilience, corruption, organisational status, cultural perspectives, illegitimate tasks, high PSC work groups, PSC variability in work groups, etc. They investigate outcomes such as psychological distress, emotional exhaustion, depression, worry, engagement, health, cognitive decline, personal initiative, boredom, cynicism, sickness absence, and productivity loss, in various workplace settings across many countries. This unique book allows practitioners to rapidly update practical measures, benchmarks and processes, and provides students and trainees with an introduction to PSC and important concepts and methods, quantitative and qualitative, in occupational health with leads to further sources. Students as well as experts on occupational health and safety, human resource management, occupational health psychology, organisational psychology and practitioners, unions and policy makers will find this book highly informative. It covers relevant materials for undergraduate and postgraduate education, drawing upon the concepts, topics and methods (diary, multilevel, longitudinal, qualitative, data linkage) within the multidisciplinary occupational health area.
The health effects of psychosocial factors are a widely discussed and controversial topic. Do positive and negative emotions affect our risk of developing physical disease? Are depressive individuals more likely to have cancer than those with an optimistic outlook on life? And what is the role of IQ in staying healthy and recovering from disease? Importantly, can we improve our health and life expectancy by avoiding certain psychosocial risk factors and maximizing positive psychological well-being? These and other questions are the focus of psychosocial epidemiology, a discipline linking psychological, social and biological sciences. The Routledge International Handbook of Psychosocial Epidemiology is the first book to map this growing discipline. Including contributions from many of the leading researchers in the field, it is divided into five sections: Part I: Methodological challenges in studying psychosocial factors and health; Part II: Psychosocial factors in the etiology and prognosis of chronic diseases; Part III: Controversies in the psychosocial approach; Part IV: Interventions and policy implications Part V: Future research directions Taking advantage of a huge growth in research in recent years, the book provides the reader with the essentials to evaluate the diverse set of studies on psychosocial factors and health that are published today, and describes study designs in this field of research, progress in judging the validity of epidemiological evidence, as well as challenges in translating evidence into action. This is an important and timely book. Providing methodological rigour, critical analysis and the policy implications of this emerging field of study, The Routledge International Handbook of Psychosocial Epidemiology will be an invaluable resource for students and researchers within both behavioural and medical sciences, as well as policy makers and others working in health and social care.
In our complex, fast changing society, health is strongly influenced by the continuously changing interactions between organisations and their employees. Three major fields contribute to health-oriented improvements of these interactions: occupational health, organizational health and public health. As currently only partial links exist amongst these fields, the book aims to explore potential synergies more systematically. Considering the high mental and social demands in a service and knowledge sector economy, the first part of the book focuses on work-related psychosocial factors. As a large proportion of inequalities in health in developed countries can be explained by inequalities in working conditions, those psychosocial factors with a particularly high public health impact are highlighted. As addressing these psychosocial factors requires to involve the organization as the key change agent, the second part covers approaches to improve public health through organizational level health interventions. The last section takes a look into the future of occupational, organizational and public health: what are the future challenges regarding occupational health and how can they be tackled within and beyond the organizational level. Overall, this integrating book will help to broaden the evidence-base, legitimacy and efficacy of occupational- and organizational-level health interventions and thus increase their public health impact.
Every year workers' low-back, hand, and arm problems lead to time away from jobs and reduce the nation's economic productivity. The connection of these problems to workplace activities-from carrying boxes to lifting patients to pounding computer keyboards-is the subject of major disagreements among workers, employers, advocacy groups, and researchers. Musculoskeletal Disorders and the Workplace examines the scientific basis for connecting musculoskeletal disorders with the workplace, considering people, job tasks, and work environments. A multidisciplinary panel draws conclusions about the likelihood of causal links and the effectiveness of various intervention strategies. The panel also offers recommendations for what actions can be considered on the basis of current information and for closing information gaps. This book presents the latest information on the prevalence, incidence, and costs of musculoskeletal disorders and identifies factors that influence injury reporting. It reviews the broad scope of evidence: epidemiological studies of physical and psychosocial variables, basic biology, biomechanics, and physical and behavioral responses to stress. Given the magnitude of the problem-approximately 1 million people miss some work each year-and the current trends in workplace practices, this volume will be a must for advocates for workplace health, policy makers, employers, employees, medical professionals, engineers, lawyers, and labor officials.