Over the years I have had several encounters with caregivers and patients where the ongoing struggle with finding or maintaining a job is one of their key struggles.
Much has to be said about mental health and work. While it is widely known that unemployment is not good for ones mental health, an important point to note is that employment into a very low quality job can actually worsen a persons mental health ( professor Nicholas Glozier in lesson 3). A reverse connection is also significant. To be able to perform well at a job, a person needs to be relatively stable mentally. The cognitive demands of the job, interacting with peers and superiors, handling deadlines all require good mental faculties.
What makes a work ‘good work’ for someone? It could mean different things for different people. The key factors are that the work should be to ones liking, it should be meaningful or relevant to the person, it should be enjoyed and be sustainable and should also be able to provide some financial security to the person. As mentioned in the book The Element by Sir Ken Robinson, “The place where the things you love to do and the things that you love to do come together. The Element is the meeting point between natural aptitude and personal passion.” The book also talks about the concept of ‘flow’ which was highlighted in landmark work by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. It means that people are happiest when they are in a state of flow—a state of concentration or complete absorption with the activity at hand and the situation. It is a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter. The flow state is also known as being in the zone. This leads to optimal productivity as well as a sense of fulfilment from work.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper and Row. p. 15 ISBN 0-06-092043-2
