A Survey on the Comparison of Mental Health and Life Expectancy in Employed and Unemployed People

The purpose of the present study is to compare mental health and life expectancy in employed and unemployed people. The statistical population involved in this study included all employed and unemployed people aged between 20 and 30 in Ghorveh , a small town in Kurdistan, in (2012). Among these participants 120 individuals were selected using convenience random sampling method (60 employed and 60 unemployed ones). The questionnaires used in this study were the 28-item mental health status - General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) and the Scale of Hope Adult Schneider (SAHS) to collect the related data. Descriptive statistics such as Frequency, percentage, mean, and t-test were used for data analysis. The results show that there is a different in all the four scales, mental health (Somatization), anxiety, and impairment in social functioning and depression, and life expectancy between employed and unemployed individuals. The results show that there is a difference between general health of unemployed people with academic education and unemployed people without academic education and there is also a difference between general health of employed people with academic education and employed people without academic education. There is a difference between unemployed married people and employed married people in terms of general health, but there is no significant difference between general health of unemployed and employed single people.