Kamau-Mitchell, C. and Lopes, B. (2023). Mental illness and unemployment-related mortality. Lancet Psychiatry, 10(8), 583-584. [FULL TEXT] (original) (raw)

Kamau-Mitchell, C. and Lopes, B. (2023). Mental illness and unemployment-related mortality. Lancet Psychiatry, 10(8), 583-584. [FULL TEXT]

Psychiatrists have an important role to play in encouraging patients to resume employment as part of the recovery process and advising them about adjustments to request of their employer, because some psychiatric medication impairs workers' cognitive ability and increases accident risks. For example, research shows that workers who take selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) make more errors, have worse semantic processing, slower reaction times, worse memory, and 12·71 times more risk of work-related traffic accidents (if at low risk of such accidents) compared with workers who are not taking SSRIs. Workers who take SSRIs, benzodiazepines, or tricyclic antidepressants also have more cognitive failures at work than those not taking these medications, depending on the extent of their mental health problems and other risk factors. Unemployment also carries the risk of premature mortality from poverty because of the risk of poor diet and housing quality, therefore we encourage psychiatrists to refer unemployed patients to supported employment or individual placement and support programmes to help patients' recovery and quality of life. We also urge psychiatrists to have more discussions with patients about stigma, discrimination, and structural inequalities in the workplace, thus playing a role in saving patients from the premature mortality that is associated with unemployment-related structural inequalities.