The purpose of this research is to examine the psychological effects of unemployment, particularly in regard to self-esteem, anxiety, depression, suicide or attempted suicide, and the more general category of distress. Additionally, the research will deal with certain special psychological difficulties encountered by persons with disabilities who may be affected by unemployment, as well as with apparent differences in effects on men and women. The plan of the research will be to set forth the contemporary context in which the effects of unemployment have been identified, and then to discuss the scope, limit, and significance of evidence for the view that the psychology of unemployment may be at least as decisive a factor of human behavior as the practical financial effects of the phenomenon.
In the background of studies of recent years hypothesizing a connection between unemployment and various negative psychological effects are myriad, and often negative, changes in economic structures and employment patterns of the world's industrialized nations from the 1970s forward. The U.S. and the countries of Western Europe have undergone cycles of inflation and recession that have affected the structure and stability of the international political economy (Dew, Penkower, & Bromet, 1991). Meanwhile, domestic economies have been affected by activities and decisions undertaken by both government and industry, as evidenced by dramatic fluctuations in or disruption of commodities, securities, and monetary markets, as well as by corporate consolidations. In the U.S., the effects of such phenomena as the energy crisis of the 1970s; insider trading scandals, merger-and-acquisition mania, the stock-market crash, and the trend toward "downsizing" in the 1980s; and movement of industrial production and manufacturing offshore have been visited on the labor market in the form of involuntary unemployment. From about 1983 to 1993, indeed, the trend in agg...