Psychological training improves mental health and job-finding among unemployed people

The negative psychological effects of unemployment are well documented: lowered self-esteem and confidence, social isolation, anxiety, depression, reduced life satisfaction, hopelessness about the future. Further, it has been established that these effects often prevent re-employment. The need for interventions to help unemployed people to minimise such psychological effects is clearly warranted, yet little psychological assistance is usually given. This paper describes a psychological intervention based on cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), the principles of which have been successfully applied through individual psychotherapy to several psychiatric disorders. We adapted these principles to create a group-training programme for a non-psychiatric group--long term (>12 months) unemployed. The results demonstrated that significantly more of the CBT group than the control group improved on measures of mental health, as well as on success in job-finding: four months after the completion of training 34% of the CBT group c.f. 12% of the control group had found full-time work. Taking part-time and temporary work into account, these figures increased to 49% (CBT group) and 28% (control group), indicating the value of psychological interventions in reducing the negative psychological effects of unemployment, and helping the unemployed find jobs.