Psychosomatic symptoms in human service work. A study on Swedish social workers and social insurance personnel

This study reports on subjective health of personnel in human services and other occupations. A mail questionnaire was sent to 8296 employees in the Social Insurance Organization (SIO) and the Individual and Family Care (IFC) in social welfare agencies. The response rate was 69.1% or 5730 persons. Perceived health was measured by a standard form widely used in occupational health services, FHV004D, here split into four principal components, indicating psycho-vegetative, musculoskeletal, immunological, and gastro-intestinal health. In relation to reference data on other human service personnel (nurses, teachers) and white collar workers (bank and insurance personnel), the studied groups scored much higher on psycho-vegetative symptoms (OR:s about 3), higher on musculo-skeletal symptoms (OR:s about 1.7), but had equal scores on the other symptom types. It is concluded that self-reported psychovegetative and musculoskeletal health is especially problematic in SIO and IFC, indicating stress in human service work. It is hypothesized that an adversary relation to clients can be an aggravating factor in that context.