ABSTRACT
Since it became clear that psychiatrically disturbed people could be resettled in work if indeed they were not already there, successive ideas, theories, or perhaps myths have been propounded as to the type of work they could do, and more particularly, not do. Setting up our three empirical studies, we held discussions with a wide range of employers and occupational health doctors who all fed us impressive reasons why their particular industry offered an unsuitable milieu. Seafaring meant the presence of cheap and plentiful liquor and the absence of skilled medical help. Working with dangerous substances was self-evidently unthinkable. Hazardous conditions and small group interdependence ruled out coal-mining. Chemists’ shops offered access to drugs and other service industries involved face to face contact with the public. These prohibitions, at first faithfully noted, were soon realized to be drawing the net wider than need be. What about shipping company employees who never go to sea? Or surface workers at the pits? Records were then received for our D Study relating to employees in some of the most dangerous industries, which cannot be named because of the outcry that would result, and the wrong alarmist conclusions that would be drawn. As an industrial medical officer in one of the most hazardous industries remarked in correspondence: in a given industry not all the jobs will be dangerous; some will be suitable, others not.
