© 1998 by Oxford University Press and the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center (MPRC)
Employment, Attitudes Toward Work, and Quality of Life Among People With Schizophrenia in Three Countries
Professor of Psychiatry and Acting Head of the Department of Social Psychiatry, Freie Universität Berlin Berlin, Germany, and is now Professor of Social and Community Psychiatry, St. Bartholomew's and the Royal London School of Medicine London, United Kingdom
Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of Colorado, and Medical Director of the Mental Health Center of Boulder County Boulder, Colorado
Consultant Psychiatrist, Psychiatrische Universitätsklinik, Ostermundingen Switzerland
Research Fellow, Department of Social Psychiatry, Freie Universität Berlin Berlin, Germany
Reprint requests should be sent to Dr. S. Priebe, St. Bartholomew's and the Royal London School of Medicine, Academic Unit, East Ham Memorial Hospital, London E7 8QR, United Kingdom
This study examines attitudes toward work, work incentives, and the impact of work on quality of life for people with schizophrenia, and investigates whether these findings differ among Western countries. We interviewed 24 randomly selected subjects with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder (12 employed and 12 unemployed) at each of three sites: Boulder, Colorado, United States; Berlin, Germany; and Berne, Switzerland. No significant differences were found in the subjects' attitudes toward work or subjective well-being, although Swiss patients had a higher cost-of-living-adjusted income. Unemployed subjects reported a lower subjective reservation (minimum financially worthwhile) wage than employed subjects in Berlin and Berne, whereas the reverse was true in Boulder. When subjects from all sites were combined, employed patients displayed less psychopathology and significant advantages in terms of objective and subjective measures of income and well-being: They were also more likely to stress the importance of work. The results suggest that work is associated with a markedly better quality of life for people with schizophrenia, but that disability pension programs in the United States might introduce work disincentives.
Keywords: Quality of life / work / employment
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