The long-term effects of working with computers: the state of the art in the field of computer use and occupational health

The concept covers a wide range of health criteria; in general, this gives rise to a classification involving the following categories: job-related ill-health; job-related discomfort (physical and mental); mental well-being; social well-being; professional and skills development. To illustrate how all these dimensions are related to health, we can position them on the bipolar continuum that has been accepted within the western world since it was adopted by the World Health Organisation (WHO) after the end of the Second World War. When confining our attention to a particular occupational sector, the elements of the different health dimensions are specified (as the research progresses) in terms of particular forms of ill-health, types of workload and conditions of well-being; these will depend on the technical equipment, job demands and work organisation that prevail in the occupational sector in question.