Representations: An Important Key to Understanding Workers’ Coping Behaviors During Rehabilitation and the Return-to-Work Process

Every year many workers are excluded from work because of a work disability attributable to a musculoskeletal disorder (MSD). Factors associated with the development and persistence of the work disability can be related to the worker, work environment, compensation policies, healthcare system and insurance system. Workers’ understanding/representations of their disability are associated with coping behaviors aimed at helping them adapt to or solve their health problem. A representation is a complex, organized entity incorporating thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes regarding a particular subject. Representations have been studied in anthropology, sociology and psychology since the 1960s, but often in a compartmentalized way. These representations provide an important key to understanding what motivates workers during rehabilitation and the return-to-work process. To build upon disciplinary knowledge and better understand workers’ efforts to cope with their persistent disability, this article therefore aims to pool the different knowledge available on the illness representation concept, from the fields of anthropology, sociology and psychology in order to gain a better understanding of its application in the MSD context.