The present work is a descriptive study of the effects of the unemployment situation about the mental health, conceived as the variation of the psychological well-being or the presence and intensity of light mental disturbances (not psychotic). In this sense, the scores obtained in the application of the General Health Questionnaire of Goldberg was compared to a sample of employees (N=184) and to a sample of unemployed (N=458), being exercised on the samples the control of social and demographic variables. Besides that primary analysis, it was verified inside of the unemployed sample the performance of the scores of the QSG-12, under mediation of social and demographic variables, Work centrality and Social Support. The theoretical references that subsidizes the research drawing and the analyses of the results it occupies a psychosocial perspective eminently, from the treatment of the subject of the workers' unemployment as mark of the situation of the productive restructuring and also as structural component of the effective capitalist economic system in Brazil, to the understanding of the mental health while the presence and maintenance of positive lines of the psychological well-being, that surpasses the absence of pathological symptom. The statistical procedures are based in Analysis of Variance and Analysis of Regression, accompanied of tests of internal consistency of the samples and of significance tests and correlations tests (Pearson and Qui-square).
work; unemployment; psychological well-being; mental health
