When Couples Cope With Job Loss: A Strategy for Developing and Testing Preventive Interventions

Work is a fundamental determinant of how Americans feel about the quality of their life. In the past 15 years, employment has gained a central role in the lives of women as well as men, with married women and single mothers greatly increasing their participation in the workforce (Nieva, 1988). As economic changes trigger workplace shutdowns and reductions in the workforce, an estimated 10 million employees annually lose their jobs (U.S. Department of Labor, 1986). Findings from the Great Depression to the present, based on cross-sectional, longitudinal, and prospective designs, have documented the psychological and social costs of job loss for the unemployed person, for individual members of the person's family, and for the family as a whole (Dew, Penkower, & Bromet, 1991). Numerous studies have shown that job loss is associated with increased depressive symptoms, increased anxiety, lower selfesteem, and increased risk of suicide attempts by the unemployed person (Cobb & Kasl, 1977). Job loss also appears to affect the family of the job seeker. The husband's loss of a job is related to increased incidence of wife battering ( Windschuttle, 1980), wife mortality (Moser, Fox, & Jones, 1984), wife psychiatric disorder (Bebbington, Hurry, Tennant, Sturt, & Wing, 1981), and child abuse (Taitz, King, Nicholson, & Kessel, 1987). As a whole, the research literature provides consistent evidence that job loss puts the recently unemployed individual and his or her family at significant risk for emotional disorders and for deterioration of the quality of family life. As such, this research suggests that interventions delivered before or shortly after job loss hold great promise for reducing these risks and for preventing the harmful social and emotional sequelae just described. Experimental trials of preventive interventions aimed at helping the individual job seeker cope effectively with job loss have demonstrated significant financial and psychological benefits for the job seeker (Vinokur, van Ryn, Gramlich, & Price, 1991). Research also has shown that families may have an important role to