A Mapping Review on NEETs' Psychological Characteristics: Informing Policies and Programs

Abstract

The acronym NEET refers to youth aged 15–29 who are not engaged in employment, education or training. Although acknowledged as a social, economic and political problem, existing policies struggle to re-engage NEET youth in formal education or work because of the lack of understanding of their psychological characteristics. This mapping review, guided by PRISMA methodology, aimed to map specific NEETs' psychological characteristics. AI research tools, specifically Elicit and Scispace, streamlined the search process, identifying 1071 articles. After a comprehensive screening process, 10 studies met the inclusion criteria, covering 19,418 NEET youth. The included studies predominantly used correlational designs and focused mainly on challenging psychological characteristics, revealing that NEET status is strongly associated with negative mental health outcomes, including increased stress, anxiety and depressive symptoms, as well as behavioural issues, along with a notable gap in research on protective factors. This review highlights that the existing evidence on NEETs psychological features is mainly correlational, does not include relevant and much-needed qualitative approaches, emphasises challenging psychological outcomes (e.g., internalisation) over positive psychological ones (e.g., resilience) and presents some conceptual overlaps between psychological constructs, which hampers the ability to design effective policies and programs.