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Mental health and jobs feed each other
Struggling with your mental health at 15 doesn't make showing up to school any easier, so qualifications suffer. Each step makes the next one harder, and the further someone gets down that chain, the harder it is to pull them back.
The pressure runs in both directions, which is what makes it difficult to fix. A generation dealing with an unstable job market, serious debt, and housing it can't afford is under chronic stress, and chronic stress is detrimental to mental health. Yet the numbers started moving the wrong way as far back as 2011, years before the post-pandemic jobs crunch and the current cost of living crisis. In the UK, depression among people aged 15 to 21 nearly doubled between 2003 and 2019.
The share of young people in the UK reporting common mental health conditions rose from 19% in 2014 to nearly 26%. In Australia, the prevalence of depression among young adults more than doubled between 2007 and 2021. In the US, for the first time on record, people aged 18 to 24 are more likely to report poor mental health than people twice their age.
Why do mental health conditions start so young?
The World Health Organization reports that half of all mental health conditions begin by age 14. A 2005 analysis of a US national survey by Ronald Kessler and colleagues found that about three-quarters of lifetime cases had begun by age 24. Adolescence brings rapid change in the brain regions that handle emotion and planning, along with new social and academic pressures. The same analysis found that the median age of onset for anxiety disorders was 11.
How does chronic stress affect mental health?
Short bursts of stress trigger a hormone response, led by cortisol, that settles when the threat passes. When stress stays high for months, that system, called the HPA axis, stays activated. Research in people and animals has linked prolonged cortisol exposure with changes in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, regions involved in memory and decision-making. Large reviews have also found chronic stress to be a risk factor for depression.
Why does unemployment weigh on mental health?
Psychologist Marie Jahoda argued in the 1980s that work supplies more than income: a daily time structure, regular social contact, a shared purpose, a social identity, and activity. Her latent deprivation theory holds that losing those is what harms people without a job. A 2009 meta-analysis by Karsten Paul and Klaus Moser, covering studies across many countries, found that unemployed people showed significantly higher psychological distress than employed people.
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