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Employment Status and Mental Health: Mediating Roles of Social Support and Coping Strategies

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Abstract

Although it has been established that unemployment and underemployment increase distress and depression, the psychological mechanisms involved are not very clear. This study examines the roles of social support and coping strategies as mediators of the association between employment status and mental health, as well as gender and age differences as moderators. Residents from the epidemiological catchment area of south-west Montreal responded to a randomized household survey for adults in 2009. A follow-up was conducted based on participants’ employment status 2 and 4 years later. ANOVAs tests were computed with SPSS to evaluate group differences, and structural equation modeling was performed with AMOS to test mediation effects. At baseline, among participants between 18 and 64 years old (n = 2325), 14.3 % were unemployed/not studying, 14.4 % worked part-time, and 56.5 % worked full-time. Employment status was found to significantly affect depression among those under 45 years old (chi-square = 23.4, p < 0.001). Results showed a negative association of full-time employment with depression, which was fully mediated by social support, less coping with drugs/medication, and less distress. A negative association with full-time employment was also noted with distress, which was partially mediated by increased social support, coping with alcohol, and less coping with drugs/medication. The total indirect effect suggests that full-time employees generally have more resources and do not tend to use avoidance strategies like coping with drugs/medication, resulting in less distress (β = −0.05; p < 0.01) and depression (β = −0.028; p < 0.01). Results suggest that optimal impact on mental health could be attained when increasing employment, namely full-time employment, in communities.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank all of the participants who took part in the study. Thank you to Diana Milton for her help in the linguistic revision of the article. The work presented in this study was conducted at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute. This manuscript is original, not previously published, and not under concurrent consideration elsewhere. Funding was provided by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).

Funding Information

This study was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Grant No. 245417, received by Jean Caron, Ph.D.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Douglas Mental Health University Institute, Research Centre, 6875 LaSalle Boulevard, Montreal, QC, H4H 1R3, Canada

    Michel Perreault, El Hadj Touré, Nicole Perreault & Jean Caron

  2. Department of Psychiatry, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada

    Michel Perreault & Jean Caron

  3. Direction de Santé Publique de Montréal, 1301 rue Sherbrooke E., Montreal, QC, H2L 1M3, Canada

    Nicole Perreault

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  1. Michel Perreault
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Correspondence to Michel Perreault.

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Conflict of interest

Michel Perreault, Ph.D. declares that he has no conflict of interest, El Hadj Touré, Ph.D. declares that he has no conflict of interest, Nicole Perreault, Ph.D. declares that she has no conflict of interest; Jean Caron, Ph.D. declares that he has no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Perreault, M., Touré, E.H., Perreault, N. et al. Employment Status and Mental Health: Mediating Roles of Social Support and Coping Strategies. Psychiatr Q 88, 501–514 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11126-016-9460-0

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