The study puts stress on the fact that losing a job or other nerve-racking situations have a serious impact on the mental and physical well-being of a person. Such conditions lead to the development of chronic ailments, said David R. Williams, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health who was not involved in the research.
Incidentally, more than half a million people have lost their jobs in the month of April alone.
Study details
For the latest study purposes, Kate W. Strully from the Harvard School of Public Health took into account 8,125 people. Data pertaining to employment and health of these individuals collected in 1999, 2001 and 2003 was analyzed by the Panel Study of Income Dynamics at the University of Michigan.
It was found that workers who had to lose their job without any fault of their own were two times more susceptible to getting affected by a new health problem like high blood pressure, diabetes or heart ailment over the next one and a half year. This was in comparison to those who remained employed.
It was noticed that the danger to health was the same in people who landed up in new jobs rapidly as in those who did not get any employment.
Strully, an assistant professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Albany, said that she examined cases where people had to lose their jobs for reasons that “shouldn’t have had anything to do with their health.” She said that the after-effects on health are not “reflecting a prior condition”.
The latest study specifically scrutinized people who had to let go off their job without any fault of theirs. For instance, a person who had to lose his job because the company in which he worked had to shut shop due to financial constraints etc.
The study revealed that only 6 percent people with stable jobs developed a new health problem during the one and a half year period of each survey. This was in contrast to 10 percent of people who had lost their jobs during the same time frame. Finding a new job did not have much effect on the results as they still had a 1 in 10 probability of getting affected by a new health condition.
Poor health and unemployment are co-related
Many previous studies have also shown that unemployment can lead to poor health. But the reverse has always remained a question of debate, i.e., whether people with bad health are likely to leave a job, fired or laid off.
“We know that stress affects health,” said Dr. Williams, the director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Commission to Build a Healthier America. “It causes changes in physiological function in multiple ways, and it can lead to alterations in health behaviour. People no longer exercise; they eat more; they drink more. People who smoke, smoke more on high-stress days.”
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