Getting Back to Work: Guidance for Clinicians from Employer’s View
Abstract
Learn more about the fine points related to psychiatric disability and employment issues.
R. Scott Benson, M.D., says the session will help clinicians better handle the sometimes competing demands of the parties involved in the disability process.
Approximately 6 to 7 percent of full-time U.S. workers experienced major depression within the past year. And it is not just depression afflicting America’s workers. A recent 2015 examination of psychiatric disability found that anxiety arousal, avoidance behavior, and depressive mood were all associated with long-term work disability and absenteeism.
As these workers become patients, they will need help from psychiatrists who can provide an accurate diagnostic assessment and treatment plan. These psychiatrists need tools in their clinical repertoire to also address work functioning and impairments. A few psychiatrists learn these skills in residency training, but for most there are few guidelines to help determine when time off work is medically indicated and to modify a treatment plan to include return-to-work goals.
These and other issues will be discussed in an Annual Meeting session titled “Getting Back to Work: Guidance for Clinicians from an Employer Perspective,” chaired by Paul Pendler, Psy.D., vice president of Employee Assistance & WorkLife Program at JPMorgan Chase & Co., and R. Scott Benson, M.D., a private-practice psychiatrist and a member of the Partnership for Workplace Mental Health Advisory Council.
Paul Pendler, Psy.D., believes that internally run employee assistance programs are more attuned to addressing the needs of the whole worker.
Attendees will develop greater capacity to operationalize concepts such as “workplace stress” to both assess a patient’s functional status and to document the impairments related to disability.
Participants will also increase their skills in translating their clinical impressions to the more focused aspects necessary to reach goals for full function in the workplace. Finally, participants will enhance their ability to articulate to both patients and employers when return to work is clinically appropriate and how best to facilitate that transition.
Pendler and Benson are speaking on behalf of the American Psychiatric Association Foundation’s Partnership for Workplace Mental Health. Come learn about its advocacy alongside employers and how you can become more involved as an APA member. ■
The workshop will be held Tuesday, May 17, from 3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. in Room B310, Building B, Level 3, Georgia World Congress Center.
