Employers need to understand that stress and anxiety, and mental ill health, is a large problem in terms of people not being at work, or being at work and not performing well
- Carol Black
When I ask Dr Adam Coutts what we know about the impact of unemployment on health, his response is blunt and to the point: “It’s very bad.”
There’s a pause before he goes on to say that we’ve known for more than half a century that unemployment is bad for mental health and wellbeing, and that this has a knock-on effect on our physical health. Where there is debate, though, is over why it is so bad. Studies suggest that work provides what he describes as “psychological vitamins or functions”, such as structure, routine, a sense of identity and the opportunity to meet people and socialise. “It’s not all about a wage,” he says.
Coutts has been on research placement from the Department of Sociology to the UK government’s Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) Work and Health Unit since June 2016. There, he has been looking to better understand the link between unemployment and mental health, particularly in the context of today’s Britain, and how policy can intervene to help.
He is studying an intervention that aims to get people back to work and to support their mental health needs. The programme is adapted from one developed by the Institute of Social Research at the University of Michigan and now being trialled by the DWP. Participants take part in a voluntary five-day course, during which they receive help with CV writing, social support, interview techniques and how to search for a job, including how to see the process from the viewpoint of an employer.
Coutts has been conducting an ethnographic study across five areas of England since the trial started in January 2017 to complement a large-scale randomised control trial evaluation. He has what he describes as “a ringside seat” of the policy process and has seen how the intervention has been designed, implemented and evaluated: a privileged point of access for any academic researcher. He observes course participants and facilitators, and staff at job centres – “everyone from the unemployed to senior civil servants” – to see how these policies actually work on the ground.
“We know these types of interventions have an effect on job search behaviours and a person’s health, but we don’t really know why and who is most responsive. I’m trying to tell a story of what it’s like to go through these programmes, be unemployed and cope with mental health issues in Britain today.”
Image: Meeting
Credit: Pixabay
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge