“The best way to preserve young people’s health during a time of mass unemployment is for them to go to college, a report published this morning suggests. Danny Dorling, professor of human geography at the University of Sheffield, said youth opportunity-type schemes are almost as detrimental to psychological good health as unemployment. In an editorial published online by the British Medical Journal, he said: ‘For young people these are a continuum of health-damaging states from being unemployed at one extreme to being placed on what were called youth opportunity programmes in the 1980s, to having a paid apprenticeship, to having a secure job, to being in college.’ Based on research into unemployment and health carried out in the 1980s and 1990s, the best option for men and women aged 16-24 was going to college, primarily because entering further education was associated with a lower risk of suicide …” (more)
[Muiris Houston, Irish Times, 11 March]