Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past nine months, you know the economy is in dire straits and isn’t going to get better any time soon.
The statistics don’t lie, but they also don’t tell the whole story. Lost among the facts and figures are the effects of the recession on mental and physical health, especially in places like Santa Maria, a city hit especially hard by the foreclosure crisis.
For families once enticed by the lures of easy credit, zero-interest mortgages, and sub-prime loans, psychiatrists say, the chickens are finally coming home to roost.
Santa Maria marriage and family therapist Shannon Larrabee said she began seeing clients who couldn’t afford the houses they’d bought. Now, she said, those people are dealing with marital problems as the end result of living beyond their means for so long.
“We see way too many stories of people who got in way over their heads in credit card debt, overextended on houses or trying to buy a couple of houses, and the stress it caused on their marriage and how they were kind of ill-prepared to handle it,” Larrabee said. “So we’re seeing some of that definitely coming
to a head right now.”
According to Larrabee, when people can no longer afford their assets, those assets become liabilities in more ways than one.
“Things that you would think would enhance the family, or enhance the couple, actually just cause more stress,” Larrabee said. “Sometimes the stuff is really just a Band-Aid for some underlying problems.”
When economic times are tough, most people tend to go into survival mode, marked by increases in anxiety levels, according to Dr. Lynda Gantt.
Gantt, a Santa Maria family therapist, said that since the crisis started last summer she’s seen a definite increase in patients who’ve had foreclosure-related anxiety. In her experience, she said, the impacts of foreclosures are difficult on everyone, but especially on children.
“It affects people because they have to move, which means they have to move their children, and their children have to adapt to a new school, new friends, and an entirely new atmosphere,” she said.
Tough economic times are even worse on children who are more likely to base their self-esteem on material things.
When parents are out of work or can’t afford to buy new clothes, it affects the child’s view of self-worth, Gantt said. Parents, she said, generally react to financial hardships with feelings of guilt.
“They say, ‘I should have kept it together for my family. I should have known. I should have worked harder. Why didn’t I get that second or third job to make it work?’” Gantt said.
Under pressure
With California’s unemployment rate reaching 11.5 percent, according to the latest data released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, job anxieties have become pervasive, even to those with seemingly stable employment, psychologists say.
Clinical social worker Dan Conroy, who serves clients in Santa Maria, said he considers workplace stress to exist on two levels. Worrying about bills is just the tip of the iceberg, he said. On a deeper level, job anxieties affect one’s sense of overall being and place in society.
“A job is a significant attachment figure in life. It provides a sense of meaning and a place to go do something professionally,” Conroy said. “Yeah, it’s a paycheck, but also a sense of belonging, identification, and a sense of having something perhaps important to do in this world.”
Men who rely strongly on their occupations to provide them with a sense of identity are particularly prone to depression when the pink slips are being given out, Conroy said.
“Most guys are raised to be praised for what they do, not who they are,” Conroy said. “For guys in particular where they see their role is to be is the breadwinner, the person who’s working hard. If there’s any freak-out about the possible loss of a job, yeah, it’s about the money, but it’s also about one’s sense of identity, as in, ‘Well, who am I now?’”
Central Coast therapists are also seeing recent college graduates in their 20s who are feeling frustrated and hopeless over not being able to find a job in recessionary times.
Larrabee said the experience of entering the job market during an economic downturn will cause alterations to career plans.
“It’s going to force people to really reexamine their values and become resourceful and possibly do a gap job where they do something unrelated to their degree for a year or two and ride this out,” Larrabee said.
Joining them on the job hunt are older people who are
experiencing the dwindling of their portfolios and Social Security benefits, and fear they won’t have enough money to retire. They’re more likely to struggle in finding work than younger generations, according to Gantt.
“If you’re 30 and you’re facing an economic disaster like this, you’ve got time to recoup,” Gantt said. “Older people don’t have time to recoup.”
Therapists say they’re seeing more teachers and state employees with layoff-related anxieties. For many, the loss of a job also means the loss of health insurance, making already vulnerable people even more vulnerable because they don’t get treatment or intervention they require.
According to Santa Barbara County Public Health Department spokesperson Michelle Mickiewicz, the agency has noticed an increase in the numbers of new patients who’ve lost their jobs and insurance because of difficult economic times.
For those who’ve lost their health insurance, there are fewer options available to turn to in times of crisis.
Declining tax revenues have also led to budget cuts in state mental health services, meaning that many aren’t able to receive help in that area when they need it the most.
Penny Knapp, medical director of the California Department of Mental Health, said in the face of its own economic problems, the agency is having trouble providing care even to people they once served.
“We’re just scrambling to provide services with fewer resources,” Knapp said. “Unfortunately, the economy has hit mental health as well, so many counties have had to cut back the resources they even have to offer to the people that need them. We’re well aware that this is a strain on the whole population.”
Let’s Get Physical
According to Knapp, primary care physicians are the caregivers now witnessing the fallout from the recession.
“What you’d expect to see is more physical problems that are stress-related. More people are cutting back on health care because they can’t afford it, so their problems get worse and they’re seen too late,” Knapp said. “These are things that we know are happening out there.”
While medical practitioners say it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact causes of physical maladies, increased stress can manifest itself in a number of ways, including insomnia, headaches, backaches, shortness of breath, and depression.
According to Gantt, economic troubles and reduced incomes also foster obesity because the cheapest food is generally fast food, which is high in fat and calories.
Stress can also exacerbate already pre-existing conditions like anxiety, panic, and obsessive-compulsive disorders, according to Dr. Eric Goodman of the Coastal Center for Anxiety.
Goodman said investors with a lot of capital riding on the stock markets attempt to find reassurance by keeping a constant watch on the ticker or news—a habit detrimental to the psyche.
“What people are doing to make themselves feel better is actually making them feel worse,” Goodman said. “They’re trying to find something that’s going to give them reassurance that things are going to be OK. When they check for the certainty—that reassurance that the economy is going to be OK—then they end up becoming more uncertain. There’s a lot of repetition of the same things.”
Increased stress levels cause a variety of reactions in different individuals. According to Santa Maria child psychologist Dr. James Tahmisian, some become more agitated, others use alcohol, drugs, or food to calm down. While stress has the potential to be used positively, Tahmisian said, it almost always results in something destructive.
“Intellectually, you could devise a scenario where a person may use it to say, ‘OK, I needed to go back to school anyway and this is a good opportunity to do that,’ but that rarely ever happens,” Tahmisian said.
Coping skills from the pros
Therapists say reversing the trends that got us into this financial mess is the key to getting out of it with sanity intact.
According to Gantt, buying on credit leads to impulsive behavior because the consequences of spending aren’t apparent right away. She said problems are caused when consumers rationalize their spending in order to meet needs of instant gratification.
“We have been a debt society. You ultimately have to pay the piper,” Gantt said. “We don’t need the things we think we need just because we’ve become accustomed to them.”
She recommends her clients get out of debt as soon as possible and by any means necessary—from getting a second job to renting out extra rooms to cut expenses.
She and other therapists counsel clients to simplify their lives and reduce their standard of living to avoid future financial calamities.
“I think that this can be a very good learning experience for all of us,” Gantt said. “I think we can go back again to the priorities of life and the sheer enjoyment of having each other’s company as opposed to being entertained.”
According to Larrabee, 80 to 90 percent of her clients claim to have run up excessive debt. Rather than find ways to rationally pay it off, she said, many resign themselves to bankruptcy without considering the consequences.
She encourages families to get back to basics and rediscover important core values. Learning the skills to be more resourceful and responsible with money is sound advice for surviving through the recession, she said.
“Living beyond your means ultimately causes a lot of stress for families. The ones that I think are getting the healthiest are the ones that accept that and scale back,” Larrabee said. “They’ve got to take care of themselves and take care of their own physical well-being, and this time will pass.”
Contact Staff Writer Jeremy Thomas at jthomas@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in May 28 – Jun 4, 2009.