Repetitive Strain Injury and Mental Health: an experience of a Worker's Health Reference Center in the state of São Paulo, Brazil

This report presents some arriving demands at CEREST (Reference Center for Workers' Health) that have challenged its multidisciplinary team to develop new diagnostics and therapeutic approaches. The experience comes from a CEREST located in a inland city of the state of São Paulo, during the last decade, based on workers' reports, visits to work places, discussion with representatives of various sectors, as well as on the activity of the local Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) pluri-institutional team. It illustrates work situations generating diseases and injuries in five companies, especially in the musculoskeletal system (RSI). Workers reported pressure to achieve production goals, physical overload and competition, humiliation and coercion as ways to fit them into company standards. Returning--to-work employees with RSI suffered public exposure and were "punished" for their illness. The report demonstrates that mental illness related to work is not adequately acknowledged yet. Professionals involved with Worker's Health must be especially alert to identify mental suffering in RSI carriers and notify it. The authors recommend that information should be gathered, analyzed and publicized to become a tool to create awareness among health professionals in general, and produce new and effective ways of intervention to protect workers' health.

repetitive strain injuries; harassment; work organization; Occupational Health Center