Research into the effects on mental health of both work and unemployment has been extensive, but it remains scattered and unintegrated. This book examines comprehensively what is known, setting it in an original and logical conceptual framework.
Research into the effects on mental health of both work and unemployment has been extensive, but it remains scattered and unintegrated. This book examines comprehensively what is known, setting it in an original and logical conceptual framework.
Research into the effects on mental health of both work and unemployment has been extensive, but it remains scattered and unintegrated. This book examines comprehensively what is known, setting it in an original and logical conceptual framework.
This report aims to identify the knowledge gaps and begin to narrow them by reviewing evidence on the main challenges and barriers to better integrating people with mental illness in the world of work.
Our jobs are often a big part of our identities, and when we are fired, we can feel confused, hurt, and powerless—at sea in terms of who we are. Drawing on extensive, real-life interviews, Job Loss, Identity, and Mental Health shines a light on the experiences of unemployed, middle-class professional men and women, showing how job loss can affect both identity and mental health. Sociologist Dawn R. Norris uses in-depth interviews to offer insight into the experience of losing a job—what it means for daily life, how the unemployed feel about it, and the process they go through as they try to deal with job loss and their new identities as unemployed people. Norris highlights several specific challenges to identity that can occur. For instance, the way other people interact with the unemployed either helps them feel sure about who they are, or leads them to question their identities. Another identity threat happens when the unemployed no longer feel they are the same person they used to be. Norris also examines the importance of the subjective meaning people give to statuses, along with the strong influence of society’s expectations. For example, men in Norris’s study often used the stereotype of the “male breadwinner” to define who they were. Job Loss, Identity, and Mental Health describes various strategies to cope with identity loss, including “shifting” away from a work-related identity and instead emphasizing a nonwork identity (such as “a parent”), or conversely “sustaining” a work-related identity even though he or she is actually unemployed. Finally, Norris explores the social factors—often out of the control of unemployed people—that make these strategies possible or impossible. A compelling portrait of a little-studied aspect of the Great Recession, Job Loss, Identity, and Mental Health is filled with insight into the identity crises that unemployment can trigger, as well as strategies to help the unemployed maintain their mental strength.
Following an introductory report (Sick on the Job: Myths and Realities about Mental Health and Work) and nine country reports, this final synthesis report summarizes the findings from the participating countries and makes the case for a stronger policy response.
This comprehensive monograph synthesizes the research on the Individual Placement and Support model of supported employment for people with severe mental illness. It identifies empirical foundations for core principles of the model and reviews the literature on effectiveness, long-term outcomes, cost-effectiveness, generalizability, implementation, and policy implications.
This book is concerned with the psychological effects of unemployment. In writing it I had two main aims: (1) to describe theoretical approaches that are relevant to understanding unemployment effects; and (2) to present the re sults of studies from a program of research with which I have been closely involved over recent years. In order to meet these aims I have organized the book into two main parts. I discuss background research and theoretical approaches in the first half of the book, beginning with research concerned with the psychological effects of unemployment during the Great Depression and continuing through to a dis cussion of more recent contributions. I have not attempted to review the liter ature in fine detail. Instead, I refer to some of the landmark studies and to the main theoretical ideas that have been developed. This discussion takes us through theoretical approaches that have emerged from the study of work, employment, and unemployment to a consideration of wider frameworks that can also be applied to further our understanding of unemployment effects.
This report on the Netherlands is the seventh in a series of reports looking at how the broader education, health, social and labour market policy challenges identified in Sick on the Job? are being tackled in a number of OECD countries.