Early Assessment of Activity Limitations, a Basis for Understanding the Need for Sickness Certificate and Rehabilitation. A Randomized Controlled Study of People With Mental Disorders in Specialized Psychiatric Care

Several individuals diagnosed with mental health disorders get sick-listed, and further, stay within the sick-leave process for a prolonged period. More research has been warranted both concerning how to assess activity limitations and future work capacity when having a psychiatric diagnose, but also when it comes to find suitable measures for supporting individuals to return to work. Such supportive and rehabilitative measures could be situated within the healthcare system, such as specialized psychiatric care. To conduct these measures, both early assessments as well as investigation of the effect of taken measures are needed. The present study concerns an expanded assessment of activity limitations as a basis for possible interventions with a focus on the individuals sick-leave process.

The understanding of work capacity has been proposed as a complex phenomenon, where several perspectives are needed. The contribution from occupational therapist in the teamwork implies being focussed on activity limitations or facilitators in contrast to solely focussing on body functions or symptoms. In the professional vocabular, activities are named occupations, meaning that the actual performance is influenced both by individual experiences and influenced by factors in the environment. Another assumption is that all everyday life occupations are interacting, and thus could have an impact on work capacity.

The purpose with this randomized, controlled trial is to evaluate if an early and expanded assessment made by occupational therapist, and with the use of two validated instruments A Dialogue About Ability Related to Work (DOA) and Satisfaction with Daily Occupations (SDO), can have an impact on choice of interventions, changes in the patterns for sick leave spells as well as prevalence of questions from the Social Insurance Agency (SIA) and the participators evaluation of effects from being part of the project. The chosen instruments are described as complementing each other, where DOA examines an overall summary of prerequisites for work capacity, and SDO adds a broader understanding of a person's occupations in everyday life, including satisfaction and balance between different occupational arenas such as work, un-paid work, leisure etc.

The project will be carried out in specialized, psychiatric teams within the Region Västra Götaland. The aim is to recruit 150 participants (75 to the intervention group and 75 to the control group). The participants will be randomly and consecutively divided into intervention or control group. Inclusion criteria are all patients registered at the chosen psychiatric care centres, in need for their second sickness certificate within the unit. Exclusion criteria are patients with specific diagnosis belonging to another unit within the psychiatric organization, and if the patient is assessed as being in an acute vulnerable situation where the planned intervention could negatively influence the situation. Register follow-ups on health care treatment, sick-leave spells, questions from SIA will be made 6 and 12 months later. The participant questionnaire will be sent 6 months after the intervention. Four studies are planned to evaluate the intervention.

The study is a collaborative project involving Region Västra Götaland. The research team comprise researchers from Göteborg University (C Andersson and K Holmgren) and from Region Västra Götaland (C Melin). The study has been submitted to the Regional Ethical Review Board.