Disabling Sickness Among Industrial Workers

Abstract

DURING recent years several sickness experiences among industrial workers have revealed an increasing average duration of incapacitation, a discovery which is seriously engaging the attention of many who are interested in the protection and improvement of the health of the worker. Thus the Department of Health for Scotland is devoting more and more thought to the subject as is evidenced by the increasing amount of material on chronic incapacitation t that has appeared in the last three annual reports on incapacitating sickness in the insured wage earning population of Scotland. Reference is made to the reports covering 1934-1935, 1935-1936, and 19361937 which were published in 1936, 1937, and 1939, respectively.11' 12,13 Of these reports the first devotes a short paragraph to the subject emphasizing that a large part of the whole sickness loss is contributed by long-term incapacities, the rates for these showing over a 5 year period a tendency to increase. The second report contains a Special Study-Chronic Incapacity, stating, among other things, that of the