Restoring and maintaining emotional health must involve dealing with these adaptive tasks. Moving forward toward a more functional, independent, and productive lifestyle means moving away from the illness and its effects. Work, whether for pay or not, is a major part of life. Regular involvement in some productive activity brings structure and meaning to life, along with a feeling of control. To work means to be on a schedule, which in turn leads to planning ahead for activities outside of work.
Work also brings human interaction, which is stimulating and essential to basic human needs.
For those persons who were employed before illness onset, the return to work helps greatly to restore a sense of normalcy, competence, and self-worth. The effects of illness vary greatly. Consideration of the return to work process must allow for great variations in severity of physical impairment, and the physical demands of certain jobs. We must also make the assumption that the effects of the illness are stabilized and relatively permanent. In many cases, a person with new physical impairments can return to a formerly held job, with reasonable accommodations.