Sind die Antragsstellungen auf Renten wegen verminderter Erwerbsfähigkeit von Langzeitarbeitslosen vor allem auch durch soziale Motive begründet?

The article focusses the questions whether the application for a pension because of restricted ability of work was in particular motivated by social problems and less through medical reasons. In the context of court procedures 100 expert reports of applicants for a pension whose applications were refused were analyzed with quantitative and qualitative methods. All applicants were permanently unemployed persons and had a medical history of different somatic and mental symptoms. Many of them had several expert assessments before and they were judged as able to work despite of their medical problems before they were assessed again in the department of the authors. Although the pension applicants had a great number of diagnoses and therapies 70 %-90 % of the experts judged that they were able to work on a full range. The difference between the assessments of the physicians and their therapeutic interventions of applicants and the expert opinion is interpreted as a significant hint that primarily the social problems of unemployment caused the development into the medical system and finally motivated these people to applicate a pension. This process was characterized as medicalization of social problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]