Work, in addition to being an economic or wage aid, can also be seen most of the time as a source of well-being and psychological and/or social balance, in this way, when there is no work, there are several changes in the life of the person worth dedicating an article to the psychology of the context of unemployment.
When a person is looking for work for the first time or has been working for years and suddenly finds himself in unemployment, he may end up undergoing a number of emotional, psychological and social transformations. That’s what the American Psychology Association (APA) says. Compared to employed people, the unemployed are twice as likely to suffer from psychological problems, such as depression, anxiety, psychosomatic symptoms, low psychological well-being and low self-esteem”(Paul and Moser, 2009).
- It should be noted that the unemployment situation is an experience that transcends the objectivity of the lack of occupation.
- Since it is lived and interpreted differently according to a number of individual circumstances.
- Including the psychological resources available to the interested party and the environment in which you live.
Based on the different surveys carried out and the opinion of professional experts, we find a number of common phases and factors in relation to the psychological effects that can occur in situations of unemployment, in the rest of this text we will try to identify them.
Generally, the first reaction to unemployment is bewilderment with a mixture of skepticism and fear, similar to a shock situation in which feelings of disorientation and confusion occur, accompanied by a sense of failure and inability to plan for the future.
Subsequently, there is a phase of recovery, characterized by unreal optimism, with the impression of “being on vacation”, which implies that in spite of everything, the person is not considered unemployed, so the loss of employment is perceived as temporary.
But if the situation is not reversed, a situation is created in which the person can no longer live his condition as if he were on vacation and, at that time, is assaulted by the fear that his unemployment will continue. It is at this point that the person begins to make a more incisive effort to find work, getting the first experiences of rejection.
When all efforts fail, the individual feels pessimistic and may experience symptoms of anxiety, with periods of melancholy and irritability, and in many cases with the onset of psychophysiological disorders, at this stage family support and coping skills are critical.
Subsequently, there is the recognition of their unemployment identity with all its psychological characteristics, fatalistic ideas appear as the job search is reduced, with no prospect of success, in this way the individual sees unemployment as a personal failure rather than a social one , which leads to isolation.
Over time, social experience becomes impoverished by the change in the structure of everyday life and the tendency to move away from social life, when they feel ashamed and insecure, a situation that is regularly aggravated by the indifference and contempt of those who consider it weak. As a result, it is not uncommon for people to enter a depressive spiral, where it increases their ability to actively adapt and increases the likelihood of succumbing to certain temptations, such as drugs.
Therefore, one of the first impacts of unemployment is the suffering of invisibility syndrome, as stated by the Professor of Psychopathology of the University of Murcia, José Buendana. The person with this syndrome feels that they “do not see it”, which is lost in the crowd, considering themselves totally outside the economic and social system.
Moreover, the unemployment situation causes a sense of tension among many people who cannot find their first job or who have already been in a professional activity, but who can no longer do so. This situation represents for the person a change in the social structure to which he was accustomed, having lost his professional identity.
The person isolates himself from others, leading to a deterioration of family and social relationships; in some cases, depressive symptoms may increase, such as feelings of sadness or apathy; In other cases, feelings of irritability, fear, anxiety and/or anxiety The unemployment situation has even been linked to the development of psychophysiological disorders.
Unemployment causes psychological harm, needing specialized and targeted care, no longer for the search for work, but for rebuilding the person who has run out along the way. We also need social empathy, that we stop seeing the unemployed as guilty of the situation he is in. he finds hes thinking that what sets his situation apart from ours is something that has nothing to do with luck, where while in most cases it’s not the truth.
Bibliography
-Buendana, J. (1989). Psychological and psychopathological aspects of performance: depression and social support. Psychs, 2, 47-53.
-Buendana, J. (1990). Performance Psychopathology, Anals of Psychology, 6 (1), 21-36.