Work For At least 8 Hours A Week To Improve Mental Health

With the advent of Artificial Technology, jobs are already shrinking, and it is expected that around 70% of the jobs in industries like manufacturing, IT, customer service, healthcare, and packaging & shipping. Also, a recent report highlighted that India is facing the worst unemployment scenario in the past 45 years. Unemployed phase in a person’s life encompasses his mind with negative thoughts, social problems and even depression.

In a recent study published in the journal ‘Social Science and Medicine’ found that working for eight hours a week could result in reducing mental health problems by 30 per cent. It suggests that when people got jobs or paid works for eight hours from remaining unemployed (economically inactive), there was an improvement in their mental health.   

The study was conducted by sociologists of the University of California and University of Salford amid their ‘Employment Dosage’ project. More than 70,000 residents of the United Kingdom between 2009 and 2018 were selected for this research. The research examined how changes in working hours can lead to mental health and life satisfaction.   

Also, researchers suggest that employers can bring out trends like ‘five-day weekend’ or ‘working just two hours a day’ in future to keep their employees mentally fit as work in small doses, seems to bring mental health benefits among the employees.  

In a similar line of study last month, think tank Autonomy citing climate change argued for a reduction of work hours to just nine hours per week to cut carbon emissions.  

In the previous research under the same project, researchers suggested that employment offers ‘psychological vitamins’ like structured time (routine), social contact, shared goals, variety, enforced activity, and identity. With the substantive proofs found in this study, researchers found that even eight hours of work in a week was effective in providing these psychological vitamins.  

Also, the researchers concluded that there is no additional benefit in working beyond these eight hours of work a week and for people working eight hours a day, there weren’t any significant reduction in the mental health of them. Although, the researches were unable to find out whether the current average of 36-40 hours a week was optimal for mental health and well-being.  

This research can prove to be of paramountcy for job security and serve as a base for universal basic income. Also, it can help in the retention of employees which are on the verge of losing their jobs because of rising automation and redistribution of services can result in maximising the number of people getting mental benefits from the job.