A summer job gives kids confidence and self-esteem.

RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—Summer jobs do more than just keep teenagers occupied and off the couch. A new study to be published in the September issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior finds that teens with high risk factors for committing suicide are less likely to act on that impulse if they hold a summer job.

THE DETAILS: Researchers used data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which provides information about kids in seventh through 12th grades and their social, economic, psychological, and physical well-being as well as their relationships with friends and peer groups. The University of Iowa researchers selected teenagers considered at risk for suicide because they were heavy drinkers, prone to physical fights, rape victims, attracted to members of the same sex, or overweight, and looked at their responses to questions about suicidal thoughts and knowledge of friends who had committed suicide.

Looking specifically at suicide rates, the researchers found that, not surprisingly, a friend who had considered or committed suicide raised a respondent’s chances of also considering suicide by 132 percent. But they also found that respondents who’d heard about friends of friends considering suicide, usually via gossip, had a 14 percent higher chance of doing the same. What was surprising, though, was that those thoughts appeared to be mitigated by getting a summer job, even more so than participating in sports or hanging out with friends. “Employment allows the adolescent to bring resources into the home and into their own pockets, and we think they derive greater self-esteem as a result,” says study coauthor Robert Baller, associate professor of sociology at University of Iowa. “It appears that few things top ‘bringing home a little bacon’ in the summer months to prevent [suicidal thoughts].”

WHAT IT MEANS: Summer employment seems to counter suicidal thoughts by boosting a teenager’s self-esteem. Baller found that summer employment of 23 hours or more per week could eliminate the influence of a friend-of-a-friend’s suicidal thoughts on an at-risk teen, and that kids under 16 could work only 10 hours to reap the same benefit. Even kids who aren’t at risk for suicide can benefit from a summer job. Previous research has found that all teens gain job skills and become more responsible after holding down a summer job.

Although the study defined “at-risk” teens as described above, here are a few additional signs: