Effectiveness of a return to work intervention after occupational disability retirement due to depression and anxiety

Depression and anxiety disorders are the most common cause for disability retirement among people of middle age. The following social disintegration can have an additional detrimental effect on subjects' psychological well-being, which further reduces their chances for recovery. Long-term disability could be avoidable in many cases as depression and anxiety disorders don't have an etiology that makes permanent loss of function inevitable. This prospective cohort study tests the long-term effects of an intervention addressed at these young disablement retirees. Forty-one subjects each in the experimental and control group were followed-up on over a period of 24 months. The intervention had positive effects on psychological well-being. More subjects returned to work than controls. The effects were still present at one year follow-up. These findings show that an individually tailored return-to-work intervention is a useful, sustainable and economically advantageous therapeutic tool to get out of disability retirement due to mental illness even after all other therapeutic tools have failed.