In his Mashable post "A bad job is harder on your mental health than unemployment," blogger Stephen Bevan argues that bad work can threaten employees' productivity, social inclusion, and even health. His ultimate question: are we actually better off working?

"Good work" and mental health

Bevan associates mental health with being engaged in "good work," or having "control, autonomy, challenge, variety, and task discretion." And results of a Household, Income and Labor Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey in Australia say that being out of work is a bad thing: bad for income, self-esteem, dignity, social inclusion, relationships, and health.

As logic follows, getting back to work would then be a good thing. But not so fast. It's not just any job that supports mental health. "Being in poor-quality work which, perhaps, is boring, routine, or represents underemployment or a poor match for the employee's skills is widely regarded as a good way for the unemployed...

Targets report that quite often, their therapist, counselor, psychologist, or psychiatrist has a minimal at best understanding of workplace abuse — and they often feel blamed for the abuse, further adding to it.

Without understanding what workplace abuse is, therapists have a harder time grasping how workplace abuse affects targets and why it happens in the first place. That lack of understanding translates into the inability to see it in other clients' stories, losing their ability to build awareness of the issue by naming it for their clients.

Without understanding the basics, therapists might not make potential connections between targets' workplace abuse and possible childhood abuse to help targets develop insights and fresh perspectives to help with recovery.

What targets can do
If your therapist isn't knowledgeable of workplace abuse, you can help him or her help you by teaching him or her the term "workplace abuse." Ask her to learn more about it.

Mental health...

“Educators experience workplace bullying at a much higher rate — more that three times as high — than other workers,” say researchers in the newly published 2017 Educator Quality of Work Life Survey, released by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the Badass Teachers Association. This year, 830 AFT members, educators in two New York school districts “where educator unions have built strong collaborative labor-management practices on the quality of their work life,” and an additional 4,000 educators responded to their 30-question survey.

Most educators surveyed reported that their schools have workplace harassment policies prohibiting bullying, yet bullying still happens at a high frequency. Stress from workplace bullying is compounded by large workloads, feelings of having to be “always on,” a lack of resources, changing expectations, deficient building conditions, equipment and staff shortages, and...