ABSTRACT

While the standard CBT interventions outlined in Part II of this book have been demonstrated to be effective in treating the symptoms of employees with occupational stress syndromes, they are not appropriate for that proportion of the employee population which presents with more vague, diffuse and complex presentations. This group makes up approximately a quarter of referrals to occupational health clinical psychology services (Bamber 1995). In 1984 Lazarus and Folkman reported that occupational health services did little to cater for the needs of such employees, who required more in-depth, individually tailored psychological treatment programmes and tended to oversimplify the issues involved. However, 22 years after they identified this gap in service provision, it has still not been addressed and very few (if any) occupational health services offer the sort of in-depth individually tailored treatment approaches that they were proposing (Lazarus and Folkman 1984).