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Suicide Risk Amongst Insecure Work Forces

The European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) has highlighted on its website a “clear correlation” recently found by French researchers, between job insecurity and suicidal tendencies, coined “econocide” by American psychologists.
The ETUI says it has long been accepted that working conditions and terms of employment are big factors in social inequalities in health and that job insecurity affects people in a range of destructive ways.
For example, job insecurity can subject people to health-endangering working conditions and stop them being able to plan for the medium- or long-term future. However, now French researchers have found a link between job insecurity and suicide.
According to the ETUI website, the survey was conducted among 2012 people as a representative sample of the French adult population plus 312 individuals seeking help with problems from the Secours Populaire humanitarian aid charity. One in five adults in the general population was in an apparently distressed state.
The ETUI quotes the survey as concluding that among those with a mental distress score equal to or higher than a level of six:

  • one in two had already thought (even in passing) about killing themselves
  • one in three had seriously contemplated it
  • 15% had been hospitalised after attempting suicide.

A correlation was found between a sharply increased suicide risk and interviewees’ terms of employment. The lowest risks were found among those in stable employment, such as on permanent contracts, rising for those on short-term contracts, and highest of all among benefit claimants.

The ETUI quotes the survey team as warning that, “After the financial and economic crisis, we may find ourselves with a real health crisis on our hands.”

Source: Croner's



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