PhD candidate Andrea Jones
Andrea Jones, PhD candidate has received a two-year Doctoral Research Training Award from WorkSafeBC for her project, “Injured workers and mental health: exploring how depression and mental health services impact return to work following workplace musculoskeletal injury”.
Andrea will be looking at Canadian workers’ compensation systems, which have, in recent years, seen a decline in claim rates for work-related injury and illness. However, the duration of work disability has remained the same or increased.
Physical injuries comprise the majority of workers’ compensation lost-time claims and are often accompanied by injury related common mental health disorders such as depression or anxiety. Both depression and anxiety are associated with increased pain, and depression is further associated with longer periods of work disability amongst injured workers. Focusing on musculoskeletal injury claims as the most frequently occurring type of physical injury claim, Andrea’s research will examine the hypothesis that lack of treatment or intervention for co-morbid mental health disorders associated with physical injuries, contributes to longer periods of work disability.
Using population data and epidemiological methods, her research objectives are to identify risk factors for new onset depression and/or anxiety following workplace physical injury, look at the healthcare approaches used by workers who develop mental health disorders following workplace physical injury, and determine if mental health services improve disability outcomes.
The project will look for the best practices for treatment, and identify policies and programs that speed rehabilitation of injured workers and achieve sustainable return to work.