Unemployed stressed as senior employees

DAK study: Jobless people often suffer from chronic stress

06/17/2014

The unemployed are more stressed than executives. This resulted in the current DAK health report. Accordingly, it is not people in executive positions who are usually chronically plagued by stress, but rather the unemployed, those affected by Hartz IV and social welfare recipients who are permanently exposed to existential concerns. The highest stress level was shown by the group of single parents.

Existential concerns cause high levels of stress
For their investigation, DAK-Gesundheit asked their members between the ages of 25 and 40 about their stress levels. Participants should answer questions about excessive demands, lack of recognition and concern. The evaluation showed that "non-executive employees with high personnel and budget responsibilities are the most chronically stressed". Rather, female students, the unemployed and single parents are permanently stressed. Therefore, a job in the management floor does not necessarily mean more pressure. This is also confirmed by the comparison of senior and middle-ranking officials. In the DAK study, the latter "performed worse on stress than their colleagues in higher careers".

Especially single mothers often feel stressed out according to the DAK study. Apparently, the particular burden of sole parenting and, last but not least, financial worries mean that many single parents feel overwhelmed and unappreciated or plagued with worry. According to a study by the Bertelsmann Foundation in March this year, 39 percent of single parents depend on Hartz IV, compared with just seven percent of the couple families. The strained financial situation of Hartz IV recipients additionally burdened single parents. This would urgently need to be remedied by politics. Unfortunately, the proposed amendments to the „Legal simplification in SGB II“, which has worked out a federal-state working group in the past few months, the opposite. Instead of providing single parents with additional financial assistance and childcare services for their children, the Hartz IV benefits should be reduced or restricted with regard to the additional needs that this group of people has previously been able to apply for.

Unemployed, students and single parents are the most stressed
According to the DAK study, participants reported the following levels of stress on a point scale: males 17.9 and females 20.7 points male unemployed 19.7 and female unemployed 23.1 pointsemployees 17.6 and working women 19.7 pointsstudents 19.8 and female students 23.2 pointsOutline mothers 24.6 points. (Ag)