A new study has found that a fragile, unstable onset by young people into a work-life linked to worse mental health in the future. The study was conducted by researchers from the Center for Research in Occupational Health (CISAL, a joint venture of UPF and the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute) in Barcelona, Spain.
The authors of the study, published in the journal BMJ Open, are Amaya Ayala-Garcia, Laura Serra, and Monica Ubalde-Lopez.
Since the 1990s, Spain has been among the European countries with the lowest, rising employment rates in the young active population. Moreover, in 2017, Spain had the highest proportion of temporary contracts and one of the highest levels of vulnerability. Previous studies show that unemployment, temporary employment, and job insecurity are associated with a higher frequency of mental health problems.
This study evaluated the association between the possible pathways at the beginning of working life with future absences due to mental disorders in a sample of salaried employees. The cohort study is based on employees aged 18 to 28, residents of Catalonia, who reported at least one incident of absenteeism due to mental disorders between 2012 and 2014.
“It is a new approach that evaluates how shifts between contract types, employment / unemployment situations and periods of unprotected social security can impact the evolution of mental health in the community. younger population entering the labor market.It will also examine the potential impact of public or private ownership of the companies in which the subjects have started their working lives ” , said Monica Ubalde-Lopez, study coordinator, who is currently a researcher at the Barcelona Institute of Global Health (ISGlobal), a center run by the “la Caixa” Foundation.
Amaya Ayala-Garcia, the first author of the article, said, “to assess work sustainability, we use a statistical tool that allowed us to build an initial picture of the previous 10 years of working life, in which we are four different patterns. of labor market participation “.
These four patterns are stable, permanent work, increasing sustainability (reduction in the number of transfers between temporary contracts and lack of social security coverage towards permanent contracts), unsustainable employment with different types of contracts, and finally , a fourth pattern marked by later entry into the labor market.
“To address the severity of mental disorders, we measured the cumulative days of absence due to mental disorders over three years. So we found a more favorable evolution over time,” she said.
The authors of the article noted that people with a more stable working life, for example increased work stability, tended to be in the future more favorable for a collection of absenteeism days due to mental disorders (fewer days gathered) the people who had more unsustainable jobs. life. They also noted that they worked in large companies at the beginning of their working lives related to better mental health later.
“Job insecurity among young people is reflected in time and unemployment rates, which have also risen sharply with covid. Our results show that a fragile labor market could lead to shape the mental health of the young working population, and therefore public health in the future. Policies should address this problem to prevent long-term absenteeism “, co- the authors closed.
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