Practice Guidelines for Mental Health Disability Evaluations in the Workplace

This chapter will suggest practice guidelines for psychiatric disability and related work capacity assessments. As reviewed in Chapter 5 and earlier chapters, a complicated relationship exists between psychiatric symptoms, work impairment, and disability. In the previous chapter, a model for analysis of the process of development of disability was discussed. This analysis allows mental health professionals to develop case formulations based on a work capacity model that balances work demand with work supply or functional capacity. Mental health professionals can then utilize the case formulation to translate the analysis of work impairment and disability into responses to questions used by administrative and judicial systems to adjudicate disability and related workplace issues. These practice guidelines will provide a framework for this “translation.”