ABSTRACT
Individuals must be willing to confront issues of occupational choice and job satisfaction, as well as to face the necessity of maintaining a work life and a set of adult responsibilities, in order to weather the crisis successfully. A mass layoff or plant closing becomes a collective stressor to those who share a workplace. The prospect of separation from residential and community ties, combined with the crisis of job loss, places the newly unemployed at greater risk of emotional and socioeconomic maladaptation. Larger unions have been at the forefront in providing mental health services to their members through their early involvement with community mental health centers. Individual responses to the event may vary with respect to emotional functioning and adaptive coping. Sociopsychological and sociological studies of plant closings and mass industrial layoffs have not indicated the presence of individual pathology. Displaced workers reported experiencing only limited emotional impacts in such areas as psychosocial stresses and somatic responses.
