A Nav project for the mentally ill, shows that it is better for participants to work while they are healthy, than to be healthy first, and only then go out to work.
Four years ago, Nav cooperated with health authorities in trying a new method of having patients go to work and receive treatment simultaneously.
The project, named individual job support, proved a recipe for success, wrote Aftenposten newspaper.
410 people participated in the project, and 37% of them were still in employment after 18 months. In the control group, who were followed up, but not receiving the same individual job support, the proportion was 27%.
Uni Research Health (Uni Research Helse), run by the University of Bergen, concluded that even people with major psychiatric diagnoses such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, anxiety and severe depression, have managed to get into the labour market by using this method.
‘Other countries have had better results with these groups than we had in Norway.
Probably because here, we believed that for people with such serious diagnoses, it was easier to go straight onto welfare than to give them the close follow-up that is required if they are going to work’, said researcher, Silje Endresen Reme.
The method of individual job support involves monitoring the individual in a regular job, with conditions in common with workmates, without Nav benefits. It therefore differs from job training or similar rehabilitation programs.
Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today
