Report of a system for diagnosis, categorizing and recording occupational mental ill-health

Abstract

Background: UK statutory systems for occupational disease recording do not include mental illness resulting from occupational stress. The issue is included within physician reporting systems, but there is no agreed set of criteria for diagnosis of occupational causation and no agreed system of categorization in terms of type of causation by workplace factors.

Method: A multidisciplinary group of occupational health professionals, in conjunction with human resources staff, developed a system for the diagnosis, categorization and recording of occupational mental ill-health.

Results: The developed system was applied as a pilot and the outcome from its first year of use is presented.

Conclusions: The system is considered to have operated well in pilot, and has now been adopted as a standard operating procedure by the occupational health provider who developed it. The system is proposed as a tool in the development of standardized NHS or UK national systems for the recording of occupational mental ill-health.