Essentials of Occupational Health Psychology

Book excerpt: Essentials of Occupational Health Psychology provides a thorough overview of Occupational Health Psychology (OHP) with a focus on empowering readers to take appropriate and reasoned action to address a wide variety of worker health, safety, and well-being challenges that are present in working situations all over the world. Although relatively new as an area of specialization, OHP research and intervention efforts are already having major impacts on the way work is done around the world. Each of the twelve chapters in Essentials of Occupational Health Psychology addresses an essential aspect of OHP, with a consistent emphasis on putting what is known about that area into practice. Topics include essential background information regarding the history of OHP and major areas of OHP research and practice, such as work-related stress and recovery, psychological and physical demands and resources, interpersonal mistreatment, work and nonwork role dynamics, and safety. Each chapter features a discussion of why these topics are important to workers and organizations, as well as pertinent evaluation and/or intervention recommendations to help readers better understand what they can do to improve worker health, safety, and well-being, and how to convince others of the value of such efforts. Additional supplements within each chapter include a set of targeted learning objectives to help structure student reading and in-class discussion, focused discussion questions, pertinent media resources to provide current examples of these topics, and professional profiles based on interviews conducted by the authors with fourteen well-known and widely respected OHP researchers and practitioners. Essentials of Occupational Health Psychology is valuable to graduate and advanced undergraduate students as well as working professionals who are interested in learning how to manage work environments that support worker health, safety, and well-being. The chapters in this text could also provide supplemental reading for training and development workshops for professionals in related disciplines who could benefit from a better understanding of the psychology associated with work experiences.