Volunteering ‘bad for mental health’ unless combined with generous benefits
Monday 27 March 2017
TAKING part in voluntary work has a negative effect on the mental health of unemployed people in countries that do not have generous out of work benefits, researchers have found.
Dr Daiga Kamerade from the University of Salford and Dr Matthew Bennett from the University of Birmingham made the finding after looking at the mental health of nearly 2,500 unemployed people from 29 European countries who said they were taking part in voluntary work.
The paper, published in the journal Work, Employment and Society, found that encouraging unemployed people to take up voluntary work could be good for their mental health, but only in countries with generous unemployment benefits.
The team found that in countries such as the UK, where benefits are at an average level, volunteering frequently made no difference to mental health, although an occasional stint was helpful.
By contrast, in countries such as the Republic of Ireland, Denmark, The Netherlands and Finland, which have the most generous unemployment benefits, unemployed people who volunteered frequently had higher levels of mental health than people who did not volunteer or did it occasionally.
The results demonstrated that volunteering regularly in countries where benefits are less generous – such as Italy, Croatia and Bulgaria – is associated with lower levels of mental health than for people in the same countries who do not volunteer at all.
Dr Kamerade, a Senior Lecturer in Quantitative Research Methods in Sociology and Criminology, said: “Ever since the financial crisis, countries across Europe have seen higher levels of unemployment, or non-standard employment such as zero-hours contracts, and the response in many areas has been to counter this by encouraging unemployed people to take part in voluntary work.
“We found that voluntary work during unemployment can have positive effects on well-being and mental health, which increase with higher rates of unemployment benefit, but volunteering regularly and getting little in the way of welfare support can damage one’s mental health.
“Unemployed people should be given opportunities to engage in volunteering to enhance their well-being, but financial support for the unemployed is far more important and should be central to the discussion.
“These findings do not suggest unemployment benefit claimants should be pressurised to do voluntary work. The well-being and mental health benefits that are generated through voluntary work may not exist at all if unemployed people are forced to carry out compulsory community work or have their benefits cut.”
Read the full paper here.
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