NEET and Mental Health
2 min read · Last updated 1 October 2026
In the UK, a growing number of young people are Not in Employment, Education, or Training; a status abbreviated as NEET. The experience is heterogeneous: some young people become NEET because of health conditions, others because of caring responsibilities, others because of a lack of local opportunities. The relationship between NEET status and mental health is increasingly recognised as significant, with reviews combining multiple studies finding associations between being NEET and elevated risk of mood disorders, anxiety, substance misuse, and suicidality. What is less well understood is the direction of this relationship, whether mental health difficulties increase the risk of becoming NEET, whether NEET status worsens mental health, or both, and whether this varies across different groups of young people.
Being NEET can mean very different things to different people. Statistics rarely show the full picture.
The Research
The project uses longitudinal cohort data from two large UK studies: ALSPAC (the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, based at the University of Bristol) and Next Steps (a cohort of young people followed from age 14 into adulthood, based at the UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies). Both studies follow participants over many years, collecting regular data on mental health, education, training, work, physical health, lifestyle, and major life events such as marriage and housing transitions. This longitudinal design allows the research team to examine how mental health and NEET status interact at different ages, and how that relationship varies by gender, financial background, caring responsibilities, disability, and housing situation.
The four main aims are to map the connection between mental health and NEET status across the lifecourse, establish the direction of the relationship over time, understand how different life circumstances modify that link, and examine how patterns differ across sociodemographic groups. Findings will be disseminated through academic publications and through collaboration with organisations involved in policy and decision-making around youth employment and mental health.
My Involvement
I was involved as a young person contributing to the YPAG for this study. The consultation focused on ensuring the research design reflects the range of real experiences behind NEET status; that it does not treat NEET as a single homogeneous category, and that it asks questions capable of capturing the complexity of why young people are not in education, employment, or training. This involved discussing the study's framing, the questions being asked of the data, and what kinds of findings would be most useful for informing practical support for the young people most affected.