Posted on September 2, 2024 by
Guillaume Ducable, JGPmedia pour Localtis
Employment, Health, medico-social, aging
Based on the observation that the unemployed constitute “a population at risk that is insufficiently identified in terms of public health policies” in general, the IPDT has chosen to narrow the focus by focusing on the subject of the “dynamic evolution” of mental health in the face of unemployment. The survey was conducted through discussions held in various France Travail agencies in the south of France, with counselors, psychologists and job seekers. These contacts firstly showed that “questions of mental health and unemployment are intrinsically linked to the previous professional experiences of job seekers”.
Older studies in France and abroad have been able to determine that the most precarious jobs are more at risk of poor health than stable jobs and that job seekers “themselves incur more risks than active people”, especially as the period of unemployment lasts over time. Dares and Drees already pointed out in another study dating from 2018 that “career paths characterized by social downgrading, periods of unemployment or inactivity, frequent job changes or difficult working conditions are more frequently associated with poor health”. Not to mention the link between unemployment and excess mortality also highlighted by the authors of the study.
Work as a mediator between the individual and the social organization
What the IPDT study reveals, paradoxically, is that the situation of unemployment “can represent a temporary relief”, a fortiori when it occurs at the end of a difficult work experience. “It is then possible, initially, to observe an improvement in the health of the unemployed which deteriorates as the period of unemployment continues”. And to add that “these difficulties can result in the reappearance of disorders that had been compensated for by work”. A sign that work, the study recalls, contributes “to self-fulfillment”. The psychodynamics of work establishes that it is a “mediator between the individual and the social organization” and that it is as such fundamental in the balance of the mental health of individuals. The key, for some, lies in their ability to maintain an activity during their period of unemployment which allows them to better cope with the suffering that the loss of employment can cause. An activity that maintains a certain form of self-confidence as well as a feeling of “usefulness” in the people concerned, even if “it can never replace work”.
Faced with this observation, France Travail advisors intervene at two levels: the first, essential, consists of encouraging job seekers to actively search, to build a professional project “partly ignoring their difficulties or their suffering”. The authors even mention a negative effect of this job search action on the mental health of the people concerned. The second level of action consists of setting up “a listening” for the unemployed to better understand their difficulties and thus “preserve their dignity”. The advisors and psychologists interviewed as part of this study recognize in this respect that they favor “the register of listening” rather than that of “activating the unemployed”.
