ON OCCUPATIONAL INCAPACITY OF SEAMEN

Medical evidence of incapacity.

Stress in seamen and non seamen employed by the same company.

OBJECTIVES The aim of this survey was to compare the level of professional stress among seamen--crew members--who work on French oceanographic vessels to the one of technicians and engineers from the oceanographic institute, who board the ships to operate special equipment during sea voyages. METHOD Two questionnaires were used for collecting data: Langner's total health test (22 items) that ...

Leukaemia, lymphoma, and multiple myeloma in seamen on tankers.

OBJECTIVES To investigate the risk of lymphatic and haematopoietic malignancies in deck crew on tankers exposed to cargo vapours. METHODS The study design was as a nested case-referent study in two cohorts of male Swedish seamen 20-64 years of age at the national census 1960 (n 13,449) and 1970 (n 11,290), respectively. Cases were detected by record linkage with the Swedish Cancer Register 19...

Mental health and incapacity legislation

I enjoyed the article by Dawson & Szmukler (2006) because I like to keep up to date with legal and ethical issues in mental health. However, their claim for equivalence between mental and physical diseases sits uneasily with scientific papers published in the Journal. Shaw et al (2006) found that schizophrenia had a prevalence of 5% in perpetrators of homicide, compared with 1% in the general p...

Mental health and incapacity legislation

The laudable aim of Dawson & Szmukler (2006) of eliminating discrimination against those with mental illness by a fusion of mental health and incapacity legislation may not be achievable with their proposals. They address the ethical difficulties of treating ‘patients with fluctuating mental conditions who temporarily regain their capacity after medication, and again refuse necessary treatment’...