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Does unemployment increase rates of mental illness among young people? – a longitudinal population-based study.

The European Monitoring Centre on Change estimates that 22% of young people in Ireland are not in employment, education or training. Research has shown that unemployment in early life is associated with poor long term mental and physical health outcomes as well as poor long term social outcomes such as future employment, lifetime earning and community integration. A recent study based in Essen in Germany, which is currently in press in the academic journal ‘European Psychiatry’, has found that there was a 43% rate of mental disorder in a representative sample of unemployed young people. This is roughly twice the rate of mental disorder found in other large representative studies of the spread of mental health disorders. What my project aims to do is to estimate the rate of mental health disorders in young people not in education, employment or training compared to young people who are from a representative cohort study based in North Dublin. We will also examine whether mental health problems in early adolescence is associated with later ‘not in employment, education or training’ (NEET) status. We will also test for associations with social functioning and NEET status.