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OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH PSYCHOLOGY Article · January 2010
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psychiatric Association. (2000). Diagnostic and statistical
AJpencan. . TiIfJlIUi1l ofmental disorders (4th ed., text rev.). Washmgton, DC:
Author. .Barber, J., Morse, J., Kakauer, 1., et aI., (2002). Change in obsessive-compulsive and avoidant personality disorder fol lowing time-limited supportive-expressive therapy. Psychother apy,34, 133-143. Beck, A. T., Freeman, A., Davis, D., & Associates. (2004). Cognitive therapy of persorwlity disorders (2nd ed.). New York: Guilford Press. clifford, C. A., Murray, R. M., & Fulkner, D. W. (1984). Genetic and environmental influences on obsessional traits and symp toms. Psychological Medici1U!, 14(4), 791-800. Dawson, J. H., & Grounds, A. T. (1995). Persorwlitydisorders: Recog . nition and clinical management. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. .Eisert, J. L., Mancebo, M. C, Chiappone, K. L., Pinto, A., & Rassmussen, S. A. (2008). Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. In J. A. Abramowitz, D. McKay, & S. Taylor (Eds.),
Clinical hnndbook ofobsessive-compulsive disorder and related prob lems. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Grant, B. F., Hasin, D. S., Stinson, F. S., Dawson, D. A., Chou, S. P., Ruan, W. J., et al. (2004). Prevalence, correlates, and disability of personality disorders in the United States: Results from the national epidemiologic survey on alcohol and related conditions. Jourrwl of Clinical Psychiatry, 65(7), 948-958. Lynam, D. R., & Widiger, T. A. (2001). Using the five-factor model to represent the DSM-IV personality disorders: An expert consensus approach. Jourrwl of Abnormal Psychology, 110(3), 401-412. McGlashan, T. R., Grilo, C. M., Sanislow, C. A., et al. (2005). Two-year prevalence and stability of individual DSM-IV criteria for schizotypal, borderline, avoidant, and obsessive-compulsive personality disorders: Toward a hybrid model of Axis II disorders. American Jourrwl of Psychiatry, 165, 883-889. Millon, T., Davis, R., Millon, C., Escovar, L., & Meagher, S. (2000). Persorwlity di.sorders in rrwdem life. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Pfohl, B., & Blum, N. (1991). Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder: A review of available data and recommendations for DSM-IV. Jourrwl ofPersorwlity Disorders, 5,363-375. Salzman, L. (1973). The obsessive persorwlity. New York: Jason Aronson. Sperry, L. (2003). Handbook ofdiagnosis and treatment of DSM-N- TR persorwlity disorders (2nd ed.). New York: Brunner-Routledge.
Occupational health psychology (OHP) is an interdisci plinary specialty at the crossroads ofpsychology and public health within the organizational context of work environ ments. The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1974 established that employees in the United States should have a safe and healthy work environment. Similar legisla tion has been enacted in The Netherlands, Sweden, and the European Union. OHP applies several specialties within psychology to organizational settings for the improvement of the quality of work life, the protection and safety of workers, and promotion of healthy work environments. Healthy work environments are ones in which people feel good, achieve high performance, and have high levels of well-being. One of the earliest American psychologists concerned with health in industrial contexts was Donald Laird, Director of the Colgate Psychological Laboratory who garnered support from the Central New York Section of the Taylor Society. In Europe, Levi's (2000) lifelong research in Europe focused on integrating psychosocial factors into preventive medicine, as reflected in his contri bution to the U.S. Surgeon General's report in 1979. In the United States, Sauter, Murphy, and Hurrell (1990) focused attention on the psychological hazards of workplaces.
Ecological Dimensions of OHP As early as 1961, Abraham Maslow was calling for the defi nition and creation of healthy work environments. Healthy work environments may be characterized by high produc tivity, high employee satisfaction, good safety records, low frequencies of disability claims and union grievances, low absenteeism, low turnover, and the absence of violence. The ecological dimensions of OHP are: the work environ ment, the individual, and the work-family interface.
The Work Environment The health of a work environment may be influenced by a broad range of occupational, psychological, organizational, and work design demands or stressors. Adkins (1999) brings attention to the more contextual notion of organi zational health as the evolving practice ofOHP in specific organizational settings. Levi (2000) has maintained a career-long focus on the health of the work environment and as a Member of Parliament in Sweden from 2006 has aimed to translate the best research into public policy.
SUGGESTED READING Sperry, L. (2006). Cognitive behaviortherapy ofDSM-N-TR persorwlity disorders (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge.
S. ABRAMOWITZ G. WHEATON BRITTAIN L. MAHAFFEY University ofNorth Carolina at Chapel Hill
JONATHAN
MICHAEL
The Individual A broad range of individual characteristics similarly influ ences the health of a work environment. These character istics include career stage, age, coping style, negative affec tivity, self-esteem, health-status, and self-reliance. Beyond designing work environments that are person-oriented
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and healthy, OHP is concerned with individuals in their own right (Quick, 1999). Some of the specific concepts related to individual behavior important to OHP include emotion, anger, workaholism, and gender difference pre dispositions. Gender, one important diversity difference in organizations, is an individual characteristic that has important implications for OHP.
The Work-Family Interface People live in multiple life arenas and work environment demands are not the only ones that impact their health. Work-family conflict can result in a greater prevalence of physical health symptoms, hypertension, substance abuse, anxiety, and depression (Eby, Casper, Lockwood, Bordeaux, & Brinley, 2005). Employees with work-family conflict also have lower organizational commitment, job satisfaction and intentions to remain with their firms (Eby et al., 2005). OHP seeks to identify the supports organizations can provide to reduce this conflict such as dependent-care assistance (e.g., on-site child care, eldercare resource and referral programs), alternative work schedules (e.g., flextime, compressed work weeks, part-time work), alternative work locations (e.g., telecom muting, mobile office platforms), family-leave benefits (e.g., maternity and paternity leave), family-related relocation assistance (spouse job-finding assistance), and employee assistance programs. Although these programs can reduce work-family conflict, informal support (from supervisors, coworkers) for work-family issues is equally important. In fact, if informal organizational support is lacking, work-family programs are likely to be under utilized and unable to exhibit their potential beneficial effects (Eby et al., 2005). Recent models of the work-family interface suggest that multiple roles can also be health-enhancing; This phenomenon has been labeled work-family facilitation or work-family enhancement. This perspective argues that positive affective experiences that occur or skills developed in one domain (e.g. family) can have beneficial effect on the other domain through positive affective spillover or skill transfer. As future research develops, we will have a better idea of some of the positive outcomes associated with this phenomenon.
Preventive Stress Management and OHP The public health model classifies interventions into three categories: primary interventions, secondary inter ventions, and tertiary interventions. Primary prevention aims to intervene with the health risk or stress. Secondary prevention aims to intervene with the stress response or asymptomatic disorders. Tertiary prevention aims to intervene with distress and symptomatic disorders. Klunder (2008), as an organizational clinical psychologist, employed the theory of preventive stress management
in an OHP context over a six-year period to design and implement primary, secondary, and tertiary interven_ tions for over 10,000 personnel in a major industrial restructuring and closure process. In this high-risk work environment with dramatic daily change, there was concern that serious problems, such as suicide and workplace violence, might become overtly manifest. This was a particular concern for the at-risk employee population. The at-risk employee population presented with very complicated personal and family problems, and with little or no identified plan of action to resolve them. Troubled employees with chronic performance problems were facing layoffs without a realistic transition plan. Many workers developed or experienced exacerbation of existing physical problems. The occupational medicine clinic estimated that over 30% of the workforce had no medical insurance.
Suicides and Workplace Violence Suicides and workplace violence were two key outcome concern~ over the six-year closure. The results affirmed the comprehensive OHP strategy for the health of this working population. While there was a degree of reported suicidal ideation and intent, swift and direct intervention resulted in several saved lives. No completed suicides occurred related to the closure process. During much of this period, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported suicide rates varying from 16 per 100,000 to 2.2 per 100,000. While there was some angry language at times and heated emotions, with very minor pushing and shoving on occasion, there was never a serious physical altercation throughout the six-year period.
Labor Grievances and Complaints The OHP interventions resulted III significant cost avoidance. The Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Office indicated that overall approximately 40% of initial complaints move to formal status. The minimum administrative and investigative costs associated with a formal complaint are $80,000 regardless of whether it is validated. Based on the highest risk and highest/severe risk complaints, EEO projections attributed an admin istrative saving between $23.9M and $33.7M. These are processing costs and do not include an undetermined amount of potential outcome costs that may have been awarded to complainants.
Other Important Occupational Health Issues
Safety Climate Another important issue in OHP is the prevention of occu pational accidents. One factor that is important to accident prevention is the safety climate of an organization. Organi zational safety climate is defined as the shared perceptions
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of organizational members with respect to safety policies, procedures, and practices (Zohar, 2003). Such a safety cli mate should relate to occupational health behaviors that workers engage in and this, in turn, influences accidents at work. Understanding the features of the work envi ronment that encourage safe behavior at work has real implications for accident reduction and prevention.
Other Workplace Health Concerns In addition to the health-delineated concerns above, OHP concerns itself with various other worker-health concerns. These include tobacco use, drug and alcohol abuse, and HIV/AIDS because they have been recognized as critical problems by the International Labour Organization (lLO). These employee health issues influence not only employees but their organizations as well. Moreover, job stress may contribute to these problems, as it may lead to poor decision-making regarding use of tobacco, alcohol, and drugs, or behaviors that put workers at risk for HIV infection. To address these and related health concerns, the ILO has developed the SOLVE intervention program. SOLVE is a multilevel longitudinal training program that trains managers and front-line workers about five distinct occupational health problems: job stress, workplace violence, tobacco use, drug and alcohol abuse, and HIV/AIDS. Preliminary evidence suggests that SOLVE, implemented in dozens of countries around the world, leads to learning about important health issues (Probst, Gould, & Caborn, 2008). The intent is that the knowledge gained via SOLVE will also aid in the global reduction of these various health concerns.
Training in Occupational Health Psychology Formal training in OHP is equally interdisciplinary. As of 2001, examples of universities that have incorporated courses in OHP and/or minors at the doctoral level include Bowling Green State University, Kansas State Univer sity, University of Minnesota, University of Houston, Tulane University, Clemson University, Portland State University, and University of California-Los Angeles. Schneider, Camara, Tetrick, and Stenberg (1999) discuss the role of post-doctoral educational, for example as funded for several years through the APNNIOSH post-doctoral fellowships, and the U.S. Air Force funded a post-doctoral OHP fellowship at Harvard Medical School in 1998-1999. Finally, there is now a European Academy of Occupational Health Psychology. REFERENCES Adkins, J. A. (1999). Promoting organizational health: The evolv ing practice of occupational health psychology. Professional Psychology: Research and Proctice, 30, 129-37. Eby, 1. T., Casper, W. J., Lockwood, A., Bordeaux, C., & Brinley, A. (2005). A twenty-year retrospective on work and family
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research in IOIOB: A review of the literature. Journal of Voca tional Behavior, 66,124-197. [Monograph] Klunder, C.S. (2008). Preventive stress management at work: The case of the San Antonio Air Logistics Center, Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC). Paper presented at Society of Psychologists in Management Conference and Institutes, San Antonio, 29 February. Levi, 1. (2000). Guidance on work-related stress: Spice oflife or kiss of death (100 pages). Luxembourg: European Commission, Directorate-General for Employment and Social Affairs, Health & Safety at Work. Probst, T. M., Gold, D., & Cabom, J. (2008). A preliminary evaluation of SOLVE: Addressing psychosocial problems at work. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 13, 32-42. Quick, J. C. (1999). Occupational health psychology: Historical roots and future directions. Health Psychology, 18, 82-88. Quick, J. C. & Tetrick, 1. (2003). Handbook of occupational health psychology. Washington, DC: American Psychological Associa tion. Sauter, S. L., Murphy, 1. R., & Hurrell, J. J. (1990). Prevention of work-related psychological distress: A national strategy proposed by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health. American Psychologist, 45, 1146-1158. Zohar, D. (2003). ~afety climate: Conceptual and measurement issues. In J. C. Quick & 1. E. Tetrick (Eds.), Handhook of occupational health psychology. Washington, DC: American Psy chological Association. SUGGFSfED READING Macik-Frey, M., Quick, J. C., & Nelson, D. 1. (2007). Advances in occupational health: From a stressful beginning to a positive future. Journal of Management, 33, 189-205. JAMES CAlYlPBELL QUICK WENDY J. CASPER
University of Texas at Arlington
See also: Health Psychology; Occupational Stress
OCCUPATIONAL INTERESTS The literature on interests offers many definitions of the term. Interests may be defined, for example, as activities or stimuli that engage one's attention and curiosity. Edward K. Strong, one of the most influential authorities on inter ests, proposed that interests involve enduring attention, positive feeling, and action directed toward the object of interest, as well as preference for that object over another. Occupational interests in particular may be understood as "patterns of likes, dislikes, and indifferences regarding career-relevant activities and occupations." Notably, inter ests only relay information about the likelihood that an
