---
title: "Mental health and the labour market (research idea)"
description: "Mental health, depression and anxiety appear on 238 recent papers, but most are economics papers on causes or AI papers that detect depression; only 22 carry an employment, earnings or labour-market keyword. Mental-health conditions are now a leading cause of work incapacity in many countries. What do they cost in jobs and earnings, and what brings people back?"
url: https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/mental-health-and-the-labour-market
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/mental-health-and-the-labour-market.md
license: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
share_text: "Mental health, depression and anxiety appear on 238 recent papers, but most are economics papers on causes or AI papers that detect depression; only 22 carry an employment, earnings or labour-market keyword."
date: "2026-10-26"
updated: "2026-10-26"
status: "seed"
tags: ["economics", "health", "labor"]
keywords: ["mental health", "depression"]
---

# Mental health and the labour market

Mental health, depression and anxiety appear on 238 recent papers, but most are economics papers on causes or AI papers that detect depression; only 22 carry an employment, earnings or labour-market keyword. Mental-health conditions are now a leading cause of work incapacity in many countries. What do they cost in jobs and earnings, and what brings people back?

## What prompted this

Since October 2025, 238 papers carry a mental-health, depression, anxiety or psychological-well-being keyword (103 in economics journals, 82 in AI, most of them on detecting depression from text or signals): "mental health" on 50, "depression" on 23, "anxiety" on 22. Only 22 also carry an employment, earnings, productivity, absenteeism, unemployment or labour-market keyword.

## Questions

- After a first diagnosis of depression or anxiety, how much do employment and earnings fall over five years, and how much do they recover with treatment?
- Do faster access to therapy or employment-support programmes (individual placement and support) bring people back to work, and at what cost per job?
- Is the rise in disability claims for mental health among young adults a change in health, in diagnosis, or in the rules?

## Data that could help

Linked health and employment registers (Scandinavia, the Netherlands), disability claim records, and trial data from employment-support programmes.

## Next step

Use linked register data to trace employment and earnings around first mental-health diagnoses, compared with people diagnosed a few years later.

## Related research activity

*The keywords this note follows, in the tracked finance, accounting, economics, management, operations research and AI journals as of 2026-10-26*

| Keyword | Papers, last 30 days | Rank | Papers per month, Oct 23 – Oct 26* | Papers, last 36 months |
|---|---:|---:|---|---:|
| mental health | 3 | #776 | 2, 4, 0, 3, 6, 6, 4, 6, 5, 5, 4, 3, 1, 11, 5, 11, 12, 5, 7, 3, 5, 14, 8, 5, 4, 5, 6, 2, 5, 5, 6, 4, 5, 2, 5, 3, 3 | 187 |
| depression | 1 | #2881 | 3, 1, 1, 3, 3, 2, 0, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 1, 4, 4, 1, 2, 2, 2, 0, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 1, 0, 3, 4, 1, 4, 0, 2, 2, 3, 1, 1 | 71 |

## Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). Mental health and the labour market. Journal Research Rankings. Retrieved October 26, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/mental-health-and-the-labour-market

```bibtex
@misc{scholar4ai-ideas-mental-health-and-the-labour-market,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {Mental health and the labour market},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/mental-health-and-the-labour-market}},
  urldate = {2026-10-26},
  note = {Journal Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}
```

License: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).