ABSTRACT
There is a long tradition of research elucidating the association between psychological illness and unemployment. Two of the earliest contributions were those of Lewis in England in 1935 and Eisenberg and Lazarsfeld in the USA in 1938, studies which arose out of the effects of the Great Depression. Lewis was somewhat cautious in his conclusions, which were drawn from a clinical assessment of 52 male subjects between the ages of 20 and 67 years. In the last fifty years there have been numerous studies addressing the impact of unemployment upon health. A number of parameters of psychological ill health have been addressed elsewhere. Measures of self-esteem, depressive affect, locus of control, anomie, hopelessness and negative mood all give results which indicate that the unemployed are disadvantaged.
