Study finds 'no job' puts you in better mental health than 'crap job'

An Australian study into how employment status and working conditions affect mental health has yielded some interesting results. Having an awful job is just as detrimental if not more so to a persons mental health as being unemployed. More than 7000 Australians were surveyed over seven years, asked about their workplace conditions, including how much control and flexibility they had, in addition to whether they had symptoms of depression, nervousness, and how often they had felt calm and happy in the previous month. The research also demonstrated that while mental health improved for a person moving out of unemployment into a good job, moving into a poor quality job was more detrimental to mental health than remaining unemployed.

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This could be bad news for the mental well being of many New Zealand workers. In last years Employee Satisfaction and Motivation Survey conducted by job advertising website Seek found that 70% of workers want to find new jobs this year. While the main reason was “looking for a challenge” almost half responded negatively to the question “How’s the current morale in your workplace” and nearly a quarter felt unappreciated at work.

It would seem there are many in the workforce who's mental health would improve if they just up and left. Workers affected by mental illness continue to face discrimination from employers according to the mental health foundation. In 2008 a Christchurch firefighter was dismissed allegedly for his history of depression. New Zealand employers are required by the Human Rights Act to make reasonable accommodations in work for people experiencing mental illness.

The study was done by researchers from the Centre for Mental Health at the Australian National University and published in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine.