Shakera Springs
March 6, 2013
Scholarly Article Review

Unemployment and Illness

Unemployment is a major cause of economic insecurity for working-age Americans. Loss of employment is often linked with a loss of income and employer provided health insurance, as well as the loss of valued relationships, status, and identity. Each of these horrendous things can cause anyone to be extremely stressed or depressed ultimately inducing more severe health issues. After reviewing an article entitled The Effects of Social Support in Moderating the Health Consequence of Unemployment, I realized just how significant an occurrence of an illness is when one is without a job involuntarily. In this article the hypothesis suggested that social support might alter the relationship between unemployment stress and health responses. In this article there were 100 men selected to participate in a longitudinal study. All of the men found themselves unemployed when two plants were shut down. One Building was located in a large city and the other was located in a small rural area. The longitudinal study investigated the physical and mental health consequences of involuntary job loss. It was said that social support lessens distress, preventing and reducing illness and in-effecting more rapid recovery. In the design there were a total of 174 men used. 100 of which were un-employed and 74 were employed to 4 different companies. The 74 individuals were considered to be the control group. All of the men were observed at the same time using the same assessment procedures. Public health nurses visited the residence of the men in 5 different stages that included: Anticipation which was stage 1, this stage occurred six weeks prior to the plants shutting down, Stage 2 was considered termination which happened exactly one month after the plant shut down. During this stage half of the men were still unemployed and the other half were in the beginning stages of new employment, stage 3 was called Readjustment where ninety percent of the men were employed and the other ten percent were still unemployed, and lastly stages 4 and 5 were made one and two years later after the plant closed. During the nurse visits the dependent variables that were measured was depression, self-blame, reported illness symptoms, and level of serum cholesterol.