“Back to Square One”: The Experience of Straddling Adolescence and Early Adulthood in Unemployed UK University Graduates With Common Mental Health Issues

摘要

We investigated the experiences of unemployed university graduates with common mental health issues. After conductingudsemistructured interviews with 12 unemployed bachelor’s degree graduates with common mental health issues, we usedudinterpretative phenomenological analysis to generate three superordinate themes: “fall from grace,” “vulnerability,” and “life onudhold.” Our focus in this article is life on hold and its constituent themes: “stagnation,” “moving backward,” and “feeling leftudbehind.” Graduates struggled to complete the broader structural life transition from university student to the adult world ofudwork, experiencing a nebulous state of straddling adolescence and early adulthood. This undermined their sense of adult maturity,udleaving them vulnerable to becoming entrenched in their mental health-related difficulties. We discuss these findings in relation toudthe developmental perspectives of life-course theory, status passages, and separation–individuation in early adulthood, which raiseudimportant issues for the applicability of life-course frameworks for these graduates, who are a disadvantaged minority group.