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Psychosomatic symptoms in human service work

A Study on Swedish Social Workers and Social Insurance Personnel

Department of International Health and Social Medicine, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, and Center for Oral Health Sciences Lund University, Malmö

Marie Söderfeldt

School of Social Work, Lund University, Lund

Carl-Göran Ohlson

Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, örebro Medical Hospital Centre, örebro, Sweden

Lars-Erik Warg

Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, örebro Medical Hospital Centre, örebro, Sweden

This study reports on subjective health of personnel in human services and other occupations. A mail questionnaire was sent to 8296 employees in the Social Insurance Organization (SIO) and the Individual and Family Care (IFC) in social welfare agencies. The response rate was 69.1% or 5730 persons. Perceived health was measured by a standard form widely used in occupational health services, FHV004D, here split into four principal components, indicating psycho-vegetative, musculo-sceletal, immunological, and gastro-intestinal health. In relation to reference data on other human service personnel (nurses, teachers) and white collar workers (bank and insurance personnel), the studied groups scored much higher on psycho-vegetative symptoms (OR:s about 3), higher on musculo-sceletal symptoms (OR:s about 1.7), but had equal scores on the other symptom types. It is concluded that self-reported psychove-getative and musculosceletal health is especially problematic in SIO and IFC, indicating stress in human service work. It is hypothesized that an adversary relation to clients can be an aggravating factor in that context.

Key Words: psycho-social work environment • human services • perceived health • social work

Scandinavian Journal of Public Health, Vol. 24, No. 1, 43-49 (1996)
DOI: 10.1177/140349489602400107


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