The Flywheel Effect of Gender Role Expectations in Diverse Work Groups

Employment and Social Security/Insurance among patients affected by mental disorders in Italy: A descriptive multi-center study

INTRODUCTION

Many mental disorders especially chronic serious ones such as schizophrenia-spectrum disorders, are disabling syndromes and impact on patients' social and cognitive functioning, including work activity. Thus, affected patients may show a particular socio-economic vulnerability and need specific social security as well as rehabilitation interventions, including pensions or job-placements. In Italy, the Working Group named 'Employment and Social Security/Insurance in Mental Health (ESSIMH)' was founded in 2020 in order to collect research evidence on mental illness, employment, social security, and rehabilitation.

METHODS

A descriptive, observational and multi-center study has been conducted in eleven Departments of Mental Health in Italy (Foggia, Brindisi, Putignano, Rome, Bologna, Siena, Pavia, Mantova, Genova, Brescia, and Torino) and involved 737 patients affected by major mental illness and classified in five diagnostic categories: psychoses, mood disorders, personality disorders, anxiety disorders, and others. The data collection was performed in 2020 among patients aged 18 to 70 years old.

RESULTS

The rate of employment in our sample was 35.8% (n = 264). Occupational disability in our sample was recognized in 58.0% of patients with a mean percentage of severity 51.7 ± 43.1; patients with psychoses (73%) reported higher disability followed by personality (60%) and mood disorders (47.3%) ones. In a logistic multivariate modeling, factors significantly associated with diagnosis were (a) higher level of occupational disability in psychoses; (b) higher number of job- placement programs among psychoses patients; (c) lower level of employment in psychoses; (d) more psychotherapy in personality disorder patients; and (e) more years of MHC program in psychoses patients; factors associated with sex were: (a) higher number of drive licenses among males; (b) more physical activity among males; and (c) higher number of job-placement programs among males.

CONCLUSION

patients affected by psychoses were more likely to be unemployed, reported higher occupational disability as well as received more incentives and rehabilitation interventions. These findings confirmed that schizophrenia-spectrum disorders are disabling and patients need psychosocial support and interventions in the framework of a recovery-oriented treatment.

Comfortably Numb? Researchers’ Satisfaction with the Publication System and a Proposal for Radical Change

In this preregistered study we evaluate current attitudes towards, and experiences with, publishing research and propose an alternative system of publishing. Our main hypothesis is that researchers tend to become institutionalized, such that they are generally discontent with the current publication system, but that this dissatisfaction fades over time as they become tenured. A survey was distributed to the first authors of papers published in four recent issues of top-15 Work and Organizational Psychology (WOP) journals. Even among this positively biased sample, we found that the time it takes to publish a manuscript is negatively associated with whether authors perceive this time to be justifiable and worthwhile relative to the amount their manuscript has changed. Review quality and tenure buffer the negative relationship with perceived justifiability, but not for perceived worth. The findings suggest that untenured (WOP) researchers are dissatisfied with the publishing times of academic journals, which adds to the pile of criticisms of the journal-based publication system. Since publishing times are inherent to the journal-based publication system, we suggest that incremental improvements may not sufficiently address the problems associated with publishing times. We therefore propose the adoption of a modular publication system to improve (WOP) publishing experiences.

Coping With Stigma in the Workplace: Understanding the Role of Threat Regulation, Supportive Factors, and Potential Hidden Costs

Despite changes in their representation and visibility, there are still serious concerns about the inclusion and day-to-day workplace challenges various groups face (e.g., women, ethnic and cultural minorities, LGBTQ+, people as they age, and those dealing with physical or mental disabilities). Men are also underrepresented in specific work fields, in particular those in Health care, Elementary Education, and the Domestic sphere (HEED). Previous literature has shown that group stereotypes play an important role in maintaining these inequalities. We outline how insights from research into stigma, social identity, and self-regulation together increase our understanding of how targets are affected by and regulate negative stereotypes in the workplace. This approach starts from the basis that members of negatively stereotyped groups are not just passive recipients of negative attitudes, stereotypes, and behaviors but are active individuals pursuing multiple goals, such as goals for belonging and achievement. We argue that it is only by understanding stigma from the target’s perspective (e.g., how targets are affected and respond) that we can successfully address workplace inequality. Key in this understanding is that stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination have taken on much more subtle forms, with consequences for the way members of stigmatized groups cope. These insights lead us to propose an approach to understanding barriers to workplace equality that highlights four key aspects: (1) the different (often subtle) potential triggers of identity threat in the workplace for members of stigmatized groups; (2) the ways in which members of stigmatized groups cope with these threats; (3) the role of supportive factors that mitigate potential threats and affect self-regulation; and (4) potential hidden costs for the self or others of what appears at first to be effective self-regulation. The focus on threats, coping, support, and potential hidden costs helps us understand why current diversity efforts are not always successful in increasing and maintaining members of stigmatized groups in organizations and provides insight into how we can aid efforts to effectively lower barriers to workplace equality.