Can Volunteering Mitigate the Negative Relationship Between Job Dissatisfaction and Mental Health? – An Analysis of Longitudinal Survey Data in Germany

Previous research has exhaustively shown that stressful situations and conditions at work are associated with increased health problems while only few studies have addressed the relationship between engagement beyond professional work and mental health. The state of research points to a bidirectional relationship between volunteering activities and better mental health, though. An underlying mechanism may lie in the social environment and meaningfulness by these activities. Therefore the question raises whether volunteering in free time may buffer worsening effects of work stress on mental issues. The goal of the present data analyses is to better understand risk and protective factors for mental health burden like depressive disorder and draw conclusions for the function of volunteering in persons’ lives.I analyzed the relationship between volunteer work and mental health in a large sociological cross-sectional data set (within one year, 2019) and a longitudinal data set (over 2 years, 2018 and 2019) with N = 18.490 persons (a subset of the German socioeconomic panel study, SOEP) with statistical regression models for main effects and moderation effects. Variables of interest were the frequency of volunteering and depressive illness as well as job characteristics (payment, hours), demography (gender, age), job satisfaction and general health.The analyzes resulted in evidence for a small association between some work factors (low payment, low hours) and no volunteer engagement with mental health problems as depression in the same year. In addition, there are also longitudinal relationships that could be a first hint for potential causal relationships: While volunteering itself seems to be quite stable, it is performed by persons with prior good overall health and job satisfaction. This result is in line with the notion that being healthy and in a good job is a very important and central factor for participating in a social society. My analyzes also replicated the general role of gender and age and the work characteristics low salary and low hours as risk factors for depression. A clear buffering effect of volunteering against these risk factors in a longitudinal perspective could not been shown. Limitations of the analyzes are the small effect sizes and very parsimonious assessments of volunteering and mental health.In the analyzed large data set, there is more than a thousand persons affected by depression. This large group of mentally ill people shows its relevance and therefore it is worth to investigate potential mitigating factors further in more systematic future research. My results also add that health and more general a good life situation is a very important precondition for behaving in a sustainable way, which in turn might result in more mental health and support for oneself and others. Furthermore, the importance of a good and healthy work environment cannot be stressed enough with factors like adequate acknowledgement applying to both: payed work and volunteering.