Precarious employment has been shown to be linked to negative physical and mental health outcomes. There is some evidence that young adults are particularly vulnerable to mental health issues if they experience precarious employment in their transition to adulthood. However, no study has examined this relationships for behavioural addictions specifically.
This study uses data from the Quinte Longitudinal Study (QLS) to examine the effect of precarious employment on behavioural addiction, substance use problems, and general mental health status in young adults. The QLS dataset includes five years of annual data from 4121 individuals in an Ontario community. For this study, the researchers examined data from those who were under age 30 at the start of the study (n= 457).
The researchers found that Ontario young adults with precarious work had significantly more serious mental health problems, substance use problems, and gambling problems. Those with precarious employment and gambling problems were also found to have other behavioural addictions (e.g., video gaming). The authors suggest that health care professionals working with precariously employed young adults should screen for gambling and substance use problems, and that more generally, health care settings can use interventions that help people cope with precarious employment in order to improve their overall health.
