Losing your job can make you feel lousy. Whether you’re fired or laid-off, joining the ranks of the unemployed is not exactly a feel-good event. You don’t need a study to tell you that.

But what impact does losing a job have on your health? Could a layoff send a perfectly healthy person into a downward spiral of sickness? It’s possible, says Kate Strully, a sociologist at State University of New York in Albany. In her new study published in the journal Demography, Strully analyzed a variety of job loss situations — including being fired or laid off or losing a job after the entire company shut down — and found that job loss may indeed trigger serious physical and physiological illness.