JDE (Journal of Developing Economies) Vol. 8 No. 1 (2023): 1-20 JDE (Journal of Developing Economies) https://e-journal.unair.ac.id/JDE/index MENTAL HEALTH EFFECTS ON JOB RETENTION IN INDONESIA M. Arizal* 1 I Dewa Gede Karma Wisana 2 1, 2 Department of Economics, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia ABSTRACT This study examines the efect of mental health proxied by depression on job retenton. The primary independent variable is the change in depression scores in 2007 and 2014. It discovers the number of individuals whose depression scores remained, decreased, and increased. The dependent variable was being employed or unemployed in 2014. The data used in this study are from the Indonesia Life Family Survey (IFLS). The method used is logistc regression. The test results from 9675 observatons showed that individuals who experienced symptoms of depression in the previous period decreased their work retenton by 5.55%. Both men and women in this study showed signifcant results. This study confrms the long-term efect of depressive disorders on job retenton. Keywords: Mental Health, Depression, Employment JEL: 114; 118; C35 To cite this document: Arizal, M., & Wisana, I. D. G. K. (2023). Mental Health Efects on Job Retenton in Indonesia. JDE (Journal of Developing Economies), 8(1), 1-20. htps://doi.org/10.20473/jde.v8i1.37445 Introducton Mental health has become an excitng issue and has received special worldwide atenton, especially since the 2000s (Lagomarsino & Spigant, 2020; McGovern, 2014). It is due to the various impacts that mental health can have in various aspects in developed and developing countries (Frijters et al., 2014). Moreover, no less than 80% of individuals with mental health disorders do not receive treatment in middle and low-income countries (WHO, 2013). This conditon is also exacerbated by the fact that there are no facilites related to collectng and reportng data related to mental health in no less than 27% of countries in the world (Giang et al., 2006). There are economic costs and losses that certain partes must bear due to the direct and indirect efects of mental health problems (Lanuza, 2013; Rudolph & Eaton, 2016). One of these efects is to create a burden on the work environment. Therefore, the World Health Organizaton seeks to upgrade various priority agendas related to mental health. Furthermore, one type of mental health disorder that is commonly discussed is depression because of the distributon of cases and the high economic costs it incurs (Asami et al., 2015; Bubonya et al., 2019). According to the Natonal Insttute of Mental Health (NIMH) (2021), depression can cause severe mood disorders and impact individuals’ thoughts, JDE (Journal of Developing Economies) p-ISSN: 2541-1012; e-ISSN: 2528-2018 DOI: 10.20473/jde.v8i1.37445 Copyright: © 2023 by the authors. Submited for possible open access publicaton under the terms and conditons of the Creatve Commons Atributon 4.0 Internatonal (CC-BY) license ARTICLE INFO Received: July 12 th , 2022 Revised: January 16 th , 2023 Accepted: January 26 th , 2023 Online: June 15 th , 2023 * Correspondence: M. Arizal E-mail: zari3789@gmail.com