Invest in Your Mental Health, Support Your Career. Exploring the Impact of Mental Health Activities on Movement Capital and the Mediating Role of Flourishing and Career Engagement during the Transition to Work

Marco Giovanni Mariani, Rita Chiesa, Elena Lo Piccolo and Gerardo Petruzziello ()
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Marco Giovanni Mariani: Department of Psychology “Renzo Canestrari”, Alma Mater Studiorum, University of Bologna, 40126 Bologna, BO, Italy
Rita Chiesa: Department of Psychology “Renzo Canestrari”, Alma Mater Studiorum, University of Bologna, 40126 Bologna, BO, Italy
Elena Lo Piccolo: Department of Education Studies “Giovanni Maria Bertin”, Alma Mater Studiorum, University of Bologna, 40126 Bologna, BO, Italy
Gerardo Petruzziello: Department of Psychology “Renzo Canestrari”, Alma Mater Studiorum, University of Bologna, 40126 Bologna, BO, Italy

Societies, 2023, vol. 13, issue 5, 1-15

Abstract: The current theorising of career self-management advocates that personal resources that support an adaptive transition to work are bound to individual agency. Yet, research still needs to enrich the empirical exploration of how behaviours in personal life affect careers. For this reason, we explored the impact of mental-health activities—a group of self-help activities that people can perform to increase their mental health—on movement capital among Italian new entrants in the labour market. We also explored a mechanism underlying this relationship by testing the mediating role of flourishing and career engagement. We collected data from 229 Italian university students and recent graduates through an online questionnaire. Contrary to our expectations, we found no significant direct relationship between mental-health activities and movement capital, yet the results supported an indirect relationship. The findings contribute to existing evidence about how personal life behaviours affect career self-management and advance the understanding of the role of mental health activities. This work suggests ways to encourage engagement in self-help behaviours and implement public and higher education interventions to foster these behaviours’ benefits for an adaptive transition to work.

Keywords: mental-health activities; career self-management; school-to-work transition; flourishing; career engagement; movement capital; transition to work (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 A14 P P0 P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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