Study: 'Poor Quality' Job as Mentally Harmful as No Job

[Amerigo Vespucci]

'Poor Quality' Job as Mentally Harmful as No Job
Study Suggests Leaving Unemployment for an Overly Demanding Job Can Take a Toll on Mental Health
By Bill Hendrick
WebMD Health News



http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/news/20110314/poor-quality-job-as-mentally-harmful-as-no-job

March 14, 2011 -- Finding a “poor quality” job that’s overly demanding and where one feels a lack of job control or job security can be at least as harmful for a person’s mental health as being unemployed, a study shows.

Study researcher Peter Butterworth, PhD, an associate professor at the Australian National University in Canberra, tells WebMD that although having a job has been shown to have positive effects on both mental and physical health, moving from unemployment to a bad job can take a toll on your mental health.

“It seems in our study that the adverse effects of moving from unemployment into a poor quality job outweighed the benefits of no longer being employed,” Butterworth says in an email to WebMD.

He and other researchers studied 7,155 people in seven waves, coming up with more than 44,000 observations.

[Demeter]

1. They Needed to Study This?

[Amerigo Vespucci]

3. I hear ya

I would have taken that grant check and handed them back the same results, but they didn't ask me...

:rofl:

[Curmudgeoness]

2. An ex-coworker will attest to this. She was fired about a year ago.

She had worked here for at least seven years. The place I work is brutal, and she was in a lousy spot in that company where pressure was intense and she worked right under a total asshole co-owner. She had frequent migraine and a bad case of acne that she got after she started working there. I keep in touch with her, and she is amazed that she has not had one migraine since she was fired, and the acne is gone. I am amazed too. I knew she was in a pressure cooker, but I would never have expected this much.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

4. Cisco Systems

I've told my tale of woe many times here, but Cisco is another "pressure cooker." When I worked there (for a year and a half) I got very ill three times...one of which was walking pneumonia...and my doctor started giving me warnings like "Next stop, the hospital." I had him pull me out of there on a medical leave and stayed on it until the layoffs of June 2001. I then took the severance package and started my own business...ten year anniversary this June 1st!

:toast:

[Curmudgeoness]

5. So glad you got out before it was too late.

I can believe it about Cisco, I hate that company for my own reasons---on the other end as a customer. Then when our IT guy got us new phones, and they say "Cisco Systems" right on the screen, I wanted to cry. With all our problems, I still do want to cry.

[arcane1]

6. Makes sense to me!

I recall reading about an Apple(?) factory in China, where they put bars on the windows of the workers' dormitory because so many of them were leaping to their deaths.

[TygrBright]

7. Another one from the "Duh!" file.

I love these stories where EVERYONE knows except the researchers being paid to document it.

wearily,
Bright

[The Backlash Cometh]

8. At least we'll know why ahead of time why our country will be destabilized

when there's nothing left but low paying jobs.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

9. A few months after I left my last teaching job to go free-lance

I was invited to a party at the home of a former colleague attended by a lot of other former colleagues.

A couple of days later, the woman who hosted the party told me that everyone had remarked about how relaxed and cheerful I looked.

And my reaction was, "I must have been tense and gloomy before!"