Memorandum on social insurance and allied services in their bearing on neurotic disorder
1943 1943 1940s 19 pages 4 Conclusion. — With full employment and a comprehensive medical service, the so-called "unemployable" without physical disability will usually be a psychiatric as well as a social problem. (3) Old Age. The psychological effects of old age are im...
| Institution: | MCR - The Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick |
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| Language: | English English |
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[1943?]
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10796/89BE1FBB-3368-4B3F-A755-16FE1F29CFB9 http://hdl.handle.net/10796/28E9ED8F-A747-49BF-B701-CE2F41783F6D |
| Summary: | 1943
1943
1940s
19 pages
4 Conclusion. — With full employment and a comprehensive medical service, the so-called "unemployable" without physical disability will usually be a psychiatric as well as a social problem. (3) Old Age. The psychological effects of old age are important factors which should condition any schemes for social security. The variable incidence and extent of failing memory, lessened adaptability, slowed and decreased intellectual and physical efficiency should be remembered in considering the suitability of the aged for responsibility and work, and what assistance should be available for them. For work demanding promptness of decision and flexibility of mind the elderly are as a rule unfitted. (4) Malingering. Unemployment insurance, workers' compensation, National Health Insurance and other such schemes are usually planned to eliminate as far as possible imposition on their benefits by malingerers. However, those who have worked with unemployment assistance and workers' compensation cases have rarely found the wilful counterfeiting of illness to be a problem, but varying degrees of motivation exist and constitute a real psychiatric issue. Sometimes the wish to prolong benefits is a secondary factor where other disability exists, but even this is not commonly important unless inadequate benefits during disability coexist with a prospect of lump-sum settlement. The schemes should therefore be planned more for the benefit of the majority than to counteract these failings of the minority — i.e. they should be more concerned with eliminating want and reducing neurosis than with preventing hypothetical malingering. However, among those calling on the benefits of the scheme will be the "social failures," the less efficient minority of the population ; plans should be framed so that when benefit becomes prolonged the case is reviewed from the psychiatric point of view, and readaptation facilitated wherever possible by psychiatric treatment. This would be efficient and practicable only if the scheme were not hampered by excessive "safeguards" against malingerers, and if there were really full employment available as an ideal. A positive way of dealing with any persistent claimants as individuals needing help in social adaptation would probably be the most effective method of guarding against malingering and work-shyness. II. CONSIDERATION OF CERTAIN POINTS IN THE REPORT. (I) Guiding Principles. The three guiding principles of the Beveridge proposals are stated : (1) "Any proposals for the future, while they should use to the full the experience gathered in the past, should not be restricted by consideration of sectional interests established in the obtaining of that experience" (para. 7). (2) "Organization of social insurances should be treated as one part only of a comprehensive policy of social progress. Social insurance fully developed
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| Physical Description: | TEXT |