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Determinants of the ability to work among persons with mental illness

The rates of inability to work due to mental illness are high in the Netherlands. Not all employees with mental illness are unable to work. This article explores the factors that contribute to the ability to work for people with mental illness. For this research, we retrospectively reviewed notes of 135 patients of a Dutch policlinic outpatients department of a mental hospital. Results show that, apart from personal factors like young age, good physical health and, surprisingly, social phobia as diagnosis, also some work factors influence the ability to work among persons with mental illness. Particularly, reactions at work by colleagues affect the ability to work, and the importance of this factor increases when the age of the employees with mental illness rises. Exclusion and disaffiliation because of disability to work, due to processes of modernisation, is an undesirable hazard. Diversity theory could be an explanation for the importance of reactions at work, considering people with mental illnesses as a minority in a workplace, and could be a link for the development of policy at both the organizational and individual level.