The health dangers of losing your job

Reported by Susan Aldridge, PhD, medical journalist

A study shows that those who lose their jobs later in life have a double chance of heart attack or stroke.
Becoming unemployed is stressful and so it could affect your long-term health. A team at Yale University School of Medicine now report on a new study of 4301 people aged between 51 and 61, all of whom were in work at the start.

Ten years on, 582 participants had lost their jobs. Over this time, 202 people had had heart attacks of which 23 occurred in those who were jobless and after they had been made redundant. Similarly, 140 people had a stroke of which 33 occurred in the jobless group, 13 of them after being made redundant. This means that those who had been made redundant after age 50 were more than twice as likely to have a heart attack or stroke compared to those who were still in work. This result was regardless of other contributing factors like obesity or high blood pressure. Clearly redundancy is a big health risk and more must be done to protect people from its effects.

Source
Occupational and Environmental Medicine online 20th June 2006

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