RESEARCH ARTICLE
Health Behavior and Self-Assessed Health Among Some Long-Term Unemployed Living in Turku, Finland
Filio Degni1, *, Minja Vaherkylä1, Saija Hurme2
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2017Volume: 10
First Page: 232
Last Page: 243
Publisher ID: TOPHJ-10-232
DOI: 10.2174/1874944501710010232
Article History:
Received Date: 4/06/2017Revision Received Date: 21/09/2017
Acceptance Date: 26/09/2017
Electronic publication date: 17/11/2017
Collection year: 2017
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Background:
A number of previous studies have concluded that long-term unemployment is destructive to health.
Objective:
This study examined health behavior and self-assessed health of some long-term unemployed persons living in the city of Turku, in Southwestern Finland.
Methodology:
The qualitative data were collected from February to March 2016 from 40 long-term unemployed men and women, aged between 31 to 63 years.
Results:
Of the participants 85% (n=34) reported that their long-term unemployment situation had had a negative impact on their health. There were 95% (n=36) who needed medical care because of their health condition. There were 59% (n=24) who were not satisfied with the healthcare and social services compared to 49% (n=16) who were satisfied with the services.
Conclusion:
There were more single men than single women among the participants. Half of the participants had a profession of which the women constituted the majority. Several participants were suffering from a chronic disease. The participants were not satisfied of their lives and attributed their health behavior and poor health conditions to their long-term unemployment situation. They were not satisfied also with the healthcare and social services provided to them.
