Occupational wellness for people with disabilities

Occupational Wellness for People With Disabilities

This paper discusses the issues with occupational wellness for people with disabilities. It is mainly focused on mental disabilities, rather than physical disabilities. Examining the concept of occupational wellness and how to apply this concept to people with psychiatric disabilities is the main objective and will be thoroughly discussed in this paper. Furthermore, describing the subject of occupational wellness will show the operational aspects of this issue and suggest implementation steps. The paper finishes with a conclusion and recommendation to this issue.

Occupational Wellness for People with Disabilities

When talking about occupational wellness in the first place we have to understand that this dimension of wellness is a very delicate subject. As everyone strives to be satisfied in their occupation and would like to make adjustments to reach this point in their work lives and personal lives, we also have to consider people with disabilities.

Disabilities are either physical or mental. In our case we are more focused on the mental disabilities than on physical disabilities. The reason is that by definition of disability not all standards are the same. People with mental disabilities have a difficult situation compared to those with physical disability. For example, a quadriplegic is very aware of his/her situation and has to work with these handicaps, which may be forever. On the contrary, people with schizophrenia might look at first sight normal, yet have to cope internally with their disability. Help is needed for exactly those people since the ratio of success is much higher than in other categories.

At this point we need help, from the private sector, the government, and the legislators, to provide equal right to everyone. In our case we need to provide the possibility of work and occupational wellness to those people with disabilities, and mainly the once with mental disabilities.

As statistics have shown people with mental disabilities are not necessarily unemployable, yet the main reason for those people is the fear of losing their benefits which they receive from their Social Security Benefits. This fact contributes to about $276 billion, or 2.7% of the GDP of the United States of America (Drake, Skinner, Bond, & Goldman, 2009). With numbers that high we need to consider what options are out there, and listen to researchers to develop a strategy which will accommodate each side.

Conceptual definition

Occupational wellness is about having work that can offer personal meaning, purpose and satisfaction without excessive job-related stress. An important aspect of occupational wellness is finding a healthy balance between work and leisure (Mendoza, 2009).

The occupational dimension of wellness is involved in preparing a person for work in which he/she will gain personal satisfaction and find enrichment in life through work. Occupational development is related to one's attitude about one's work. When moving toward occupational wellness, we will contribute our unique gifts, skills and talents the kind work that is personally meaningful and rewarding. A person will know when he/she is on the correct path for career wellness, when his/her work and hobbies become exciting (NAI, NDI).

While many people assume that their income, vacation, or benefits they receive from their employer, are the main contributors to their wellness, it is only to be partially accurate. Looking at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, we can clearly see that the basic needs for a person have to be satisfied before he/she can go on to the next level. An important portion to accommodate occupational wellness is the fact that early counseling of a person is imperative to their future development and satisfaction. A person with a metal disability can be trained to be a productive member of society and be rewarded with independency, income, and health care benefits.

Integration of career and personal identity is very important since it will eventually reflect on the person's behavior and can lead to situations of stress or dissatisfaction. Many people assume that they would be able to separate their career from their personal life. This has proven not to be true since people when coping with set-backs at work will most likely behave differently in the personal environment because of the issues created by their work problem (Dorn, 1992).

Wellness offers a person a philosophy that supports healthy lifestyle habits that have positive effects on quality of life. The habits can be humor, philosophy, and spirituality which can replace stress with harmony, anger with peace, despair with hope, and isolation with community (Swarbrick, 2010).

People need to make decisions to the point of where they want to be in their life. It is important to understand that counseling a person to determine whether the profession they are trying to enter is right for them or not. Not every person can work in the same environment as another person, not every person has the same values as another person, and this makes us individuals and forces the need of career counseling.

Operational definition

To accomplish occupational wellness, especially for disabled people, we need to look at the factors which are present. These factors are of economic nature and have a significant impact on the issue on hand. Cost reduction to our social security system is a main point of the issue and can be accomplished by coaching, counseling and integrating disabled people into the workforce again. Occupational wellness is achieved for these people to give them a job in which they can succeed and accomplish their goals (Drake, et al., 2009).

Since the majority of disabled people are afraid that they would lose health benefits, which are provided by the SSA (Social Security Administration), they are reluctant to return into the workforce. Incentives to get back into the work program would be the use of supported employment. A person could gradually increase their hours from 10 to 20 per week to reach the point where the employer would take over their health insurance costs. If this doesn't work out, this person should be able to easily move back to disability until he/she can find another employment.

Counseling has to be provided to determine what kind of occupation a person can fill. As a typical example, consider a young man with schizophrenia who feels paranoid and fearful around people, has little work history, and expresses a desire to work with animals (Drake, et al., 2009). This person can be easily counseled and the re-integration into the workforce would be a success.