Occupational Mental Health Illnesses: Chile´s Challenges

Objective Occupational mental illnesses increasing incidence around the world and also in Chile, in part is explained on the changes of the nature of work, globalisation, women inclusion with minimum considerations, employment precariousness, workload and stress. In the present work, it is showed incidence distribution and how it has been evolved over the time in Chile, by the official statistics. Methodology Since March of 2016, Chile has ruled that occupational mental illnesses must be declared through deliberation of a clinical committee. Examination procedure needs both medical and psychological clinical evaluations, and to examine work conditions, through a workplace evaluation on the site. On the one hand, intention is to gain impartiality, share criteria, and make easier its implementation along the country with similar minimum standards. On the second hand, a main objective is to gain knowledge about the small number of occupational declarations, compared to the increasing number of complaints in the country. Results -6,177 occupational illnesses were declared during 2015 by mutual insurances in Chile (the only occupational health protection system) . 23% of these were occupational mental illnesses. -3,433 occupational illnesses were declared during first semester of 2016. 5% increase compared to the last year. 2016 official report will be ended in April 2017. -61 days were sickness absence average due to professional illnesses during 2015. 15% increase compared to 2014 (53 days). By age, 44 years in men and 39 in women had sickness absence in average. Both services sector (41,9%), Industry (18,1%) and commercial (14,6%) were the most affected sectors on Occupational illnesses. -In the mental health arena, 29% of complaints were declared as occupational illness during 2015, and only 6% of clinical consultations are discharged with no absenteeism. By gender, 36% were men, and 64% were women, in spite of employed population is mainly dominated by men.  By the end of December, 53,17% of the active workforce were men, while 46,83% were women, both affiliated to the social security system. Conclusion Challenges are faced in terms of prevention of occupational mental illnesses: Risk prevention education should start at tertiary levels with focus on occupational health, considering basics in job designing, workload, work organisation, shift work, schedules, telework and partial work. Grade level courses in business administration, mental health prevention at work and how to face it at both supervisors and managerial levels is desired. Women at work is a target group considering family-work/work-family conflicts, specially at the Latin American culture. It has been a huge effort in promote complaints, evaluation process and declarations of occupational mental illness, however, more is needed at the implementation arena in companies and SME´s. Research and development of more didactic and practical guidelines for better understanding of the phenomena at employees, supervisors and work/sanitary inspectors levels is needed, in terms of comprehension and implementation of policies. Practical methods that consider participation of both employers and employees is fundamental at the joint committee on safety, hygiene and health protection at work level. That figure is ruled at the both Work accidents and Labour Code Acts. More accurate statistics and demographics are needed at the regulator level, for a better designing of policies, interventions and targetings.