Unemployment and general mental health

 Unemployment is associated with reduced mental health (Paul and Moser,

2009 meta-analysis), effect size of d=.51 found with unemployed persons
showing more distress than employed counterparts.
 Significant difference found for several indicator variables of mental
health (mixed symptoms of distress, depression, anxiety, psychosomatic
symptoms, subjective wellbeing, self-esteem)
 Average number of people with psychological problems amongst
unemployed: 34%, compared to 16% of employed individuals
 Moderator analysis: men and people with blue-collar jobs more
distressed by unemployment than women and people with white-collar
jobs
 Negative effect of unemployment stronger in countries with weak level of
economic development
 Longitudinal analysis – unemployment is not only correlated with distress
but also causes it

Jahoda’s Latent Deprivation Model (1981)

 Researched unemployment during the economic recession in the 80s in
Marienthal – saw that, despite the higher standard of living and better
welfare, people were still struggling with unemployment
 Latent functions correspond with basic human needs
 Help to sustain mental health and wellbeing
 Can be seen as a general theory concerning the meaning of work to
mental health that implies a positive view of employment
 Employed people have more access to these latent functions than
unemployed people, and also more access than all those who are not
employed (e.g. students, homemakers, etc)
 Jahoda identified five aspects of employment that unemployed people
usually lack. These aspects are:
o Time structure – the experience of time is shaped by social
institutions such as schools and employment in modern societies
o Collective purpose – the feeling of being useful and needed by
other people. Without it, individuals feel purposeless.
o Social contact – outside family
o Status – essential for the construction of one’s identity
o Activity – being active is better than being passive
 Lack of these aspects is an important cause of distress unemployed
people often experience
 Hypothesized that people who are not in employment (e.g. retired people
and housewives) also lack some of these latent functions
 Individuals are sometimes able to find access to the latent functions from
other sources than employment, but only to a limited degree
 Believes that employment is better than unemployment, even when the
job is bad.
A study on latent functions in a German sample (Paul and Batenic, 2010)
 Germany is characterized by a high level of social protection
  Asked a sample of 998 Germans. All latent functions of employment were
significantly associated with mental health
 However, most of the correlations were small/medium sized
 Only identity/status was strongly correlated with distress
 CRIT: Financial situation also had a strong influence on distress
 Did they vary for different demographic populations?
o Access to latent functions higher in higher social classes – all
functions correlated positively with income and education
o Gender differences: women reported slightly less social contact,
less activity, and less collective purpose than men
 Having an intimate relationship was associated with good perceived
financial situation, with much activity, high status, and much collective
purpose
 Overall suggests that employment is the best provider of all five latent
functions
 All latent functions significantly associated with distress, and explained
significant proportion of variance in mental health
 But employment is not the single-best predictor of status – status can be
gained through other means, e.g. through the homemaker role
o Suggests that employment doesn’t necessarily provide only source
of status, but unemployment specifically brings about low sense of
status
 Financial situation was strongly correlated with mental health and
explained nearly as much variance as all the latent functions put together
(20 vs 26 percent)
 Result therefore does not endorse Jahoda’s model, because Jahoda
assumed the latent functions of employment to be clearly more important
for mental health than the manifest function
 OLF = out-of-labour-force
 Importantly, employed persons did not show a clear advantage compared
to OLF persons. This suggests that there might be factors that protected
against mental health decline in OLF persons not explained by the five
latent functions. Warr’s vitamin model, which proposes 9 factors, only
overlaps slightly with Jahoda’s model, and it would be fascinating to test
whether one model predicts mental health better than the other.
o Another aspect that might play a role are value and belief systems,
as proposed by the Incongruence model of unemployment distress
(Paul and Moser, 2006)
 In sum, there was considerable support for Jahoda’s model in the study.
The latent functions were shown to be relevant for mental health in the
general population and were shown to be prevalent among employed
persons, not only in comparison to unemployed persons but also to OLF
persons. However, unclear why this relationship didn’t translate to better
mental health for employees compared to OLF persons
Is any job better than no job at all?
 Jahoda’s latent deprivation model suggests that any form of employment
is better than no employment at all
 But two studies have demonstrated this not to be the case
 Broom et al (2006) – survey of mid-age Australians
o Unemployed people reported worse mental health than employees
o Distinguishing between job quality revealed a more complex
pattern
o Poor quality jobs (characterized by insecurity, low market
stability, and job strain) associated with worse health when
compared to jobs with fewer or no stressors
o People in jobs with three or more psychosocial stressors report
health that is no better than unemployed
o Paid work confers health benefits, but poor quality jobs which
combine several psychosocial stressors could be as bad for health
as being unemployed
 Van Aerden, Gadeyne, & Vanroelen (2017)
o Analysed mental health for unemployment and precarious job
types. Small gap in general and mental health between these
labour market positions – emphasizes the importance of
employment quality for the health and wellbeing of individuals in
waged employment. Although unemployment was mostly
associated with more mental health, precarious jobs did not
perform much better, emphasizing the need for stable jobs.
How does the study of unemployment inform us about the world of work?

Introduction

P1: History
 Jahoda noticed that during the economic recession in the 80s, individuals
who were unemployed displayed apathy, despair, resignation, depression
in individuals who were unemployed, despite the fact that individuals
were still living at a higher standard compared to their employed
counterparts in the 30s.
P2: What happens when people are unemployed? Mental health
 And indeed, unemployment is associated with reduced mental health
(Paul and Moser, 2009 meta-analysis), effect size of d = .51
 Significant difference found for distress, depression, anxiety,
psychosomatic symptoms, subjective wellbeing, self-esteem
 Average number of people with psychological problems amongst
unemployed: 34%, compared to 16% of employed individuals
 Moderator analysis: men v women, blue-collar v white-collar
 Countries w/ weak economic development
 Longitudinal analysis – causal rather than correlational
 So, clear that unemployment has a negative effect on mental health. Why?
P3: Therefore, what does this inform us about what our needs are? What does
work bring us other than income? Latent deprivation model – Jahoda (1981)
 Time structure, collective purpose, status, social contact, activity
 Suggests lack of these aspects is an important cause of distress
 Hypothesized that people who are not in employment (e.g. retired people
and housewives) also lack some of these latent functions
 Individuals are sometimes able to find access to the latent functions from
other sources than employment, but only to a limited degree
P4: Is this reflected in practice? Does unemployment predict lack of these
functions?
 Paul and Batenic, 2010
 Considerable support for Jahoda’s model in the study. The latent functions
were shown to be relevant for mental health in the general population
and were shown to be prevalent among employed persons, not only in
comparison to unemployed persons but also to OLF persons. However,
unclear why this relationship didn’t translate to better mental health for
employees compared to OLF persons
 Employment is not the single-best predictor of status – status can be
gained through other means, e.g. through the homemaker role
o Suggests that employment doesn’t necessarily provide only source
of status, but unemployment specifically brings about low sense of
status
 Financial situation was strongly correlated with mental health and
explained nearly as much variance as all the latent functions put together
(20 vs 26 percent), suggesting that money is still important
  Result therefore does not fully endorse Jahoda’s model, because Jahoda
assumed the latent functions of employment to be clearly more important
for mental health than the manifest function
P3: Impacts on physical health
 Linn (1985) unemployed men made significantly more visits to their
physicians, took more medications, and spent more days in bed than did
employed individuals even though the number of diagnoses were similar.
P4: Is bad employment better than no job at all?
 Broom et al (2006) – survey of mid-age Australians
 Van Aerden, Gadeyne, & Vanroelen (2017)
o No, not by much
Conclusion