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A psychiatrist's reflections on the workers' compensation system
Author(s) -
Brodsky Carroll M.
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
behavioral sciences and the law
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.649
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1099-0798
pISSN - 0735-3936
DOI - 10.1002/bsl.2370080403
Subject(s) - compensation (psychology) , adversarial system , workers' compensation , work (physics) , medical illness , process (computing) , psychology , ideal (ethics) , psychiatry , social psychology , medicine , law , computer science , political science , engineering , mechanical engineering , illness behavior , operating system
In the ‘looking‐glass land’ of workers' compensation psychiatry, symptoms are not always what they seem, treatments may have little or no positive effect, and workers' claims of continued disability may puzzle and perplex. Disability is in part a social role, and a simple medical model cannot explain the complex interactions of sociology, psychology, anthropology, medicine, economics, and law characteristic of the workers' compensation system. Psychiatrists functioning within and reciprocally shaped by this semi‐adversarial system will rarely encounter an ‘ideal’ patient. Factors in all areas of workers' lives, including those integral to the workers' compensation system, influence their movement along a health‐illness, ableddisabled axis. This paper identifies a number of interacting factors that may prolong, or even subvert, the recovery process following a work‐incurred injury or illness.