* social status and professional prestige.

These psychological functions often can not be fulfilled by other activities.

People may react to unemployment in different ways. Some individuals, for example, have chosen to be unemployed during a transition from one job to another and consequently do not experience as much distress. Others have a dramatic emotional reaction as a result of the accumulation of everyday stresses and because the effects of unemployment are often stronger when other personal crises occur. The German health report for 1998 cites the following factors with regard to the handling of unemployment by the individual:

"The significance of the way work has been experienced up to the time of unemployment is a central factor. As is to be expected, an individual who places a high value on working suffers more from the loss of employment.

Reactions of men and women to unemployment differ particularly when work has a different meaning for each of them. If alternative social roles to work are available, this can lessen the results of job loss on an individual basis. For women, alternatives are more readily available in the traditional social roles of housewife and mother, which encourages some women to enter the "silent reserve" of the labour market. Results of studies from the former East Germany show, however, that the fact that a large proportion of women previously worked and that they were strongly orientated towards their work is responsible for comparable stress levels in women and men in this region."