America's depression levels spike as economy wobbles
September 21, 2008
A tidal wave of anxiety is washing over the US, propelled by the mortgage industry collapse, high petrol prices, tight credit and rising unemployment.
In interviews over the past month operators of telephone help lines, insurers, hospital administrators and therapists said the financial services crisis, which has caused an explosion of foreclosures, was sending people to mental-health services at levels not seen since the September 11 attacks in 2001.
"It's shattering people's dreams of having a piece of the pie," said Victoria Tabios, who works at a mental-health agency in Stockton, California, a city at the epicentre of the housing crisis.
In New York, calls to the Hopeline network for people with depression or suicidal thoughts leaped 75 percent to 10 368 in the 11 months to July.
ComPsych, the world's largest provider of employee assistance programmes, logged 21 percent more calls seeking help for stress from financial pressures in July than they received a year earlier, and hospital admissions for psychiatric services are up 10 percent this year over last in claims submitted to UnitedHealth.
"The 9/11 spike was probably higher initially, but this has been more sustained," said ComPsych's chief executive, Richard Chaifetz. He predicted the economic turmoil and psychological fallout would "get worse and deeper".
Even people who have not lost jobs or homes are feeling the anxiety. A poll taken for the American Psychological Association in April found that three of four Americans were under stress because of money woes.
"We're reached a tipping point where anxiety about the economy is pervasive," said the association's Dan Abrahamson. The worries "are there all the time; you can't get them out of your mind".
In Stockton, one in 25 households received a foreclosure notice from April to June, the highest rate in the US.
The sense of unease is palpable in the city, where neighbourhoods are dotted with for-sale signs. The unemployment rate reached 10.6 percent in July, compared with the nationwide jobless rate of 6 percent.
Barbara Mautner, a psychotherapist with offices on Wall Street, said Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy, which put the jobs of 25 000 bank professionals at risk, set off a surge of anxiety.
In Dallas, calls to Contact Crisis Line are up 8.5 percent this year. Benaye Rogers, the executive director of the line, said people were overwhelmed by high fuel and food prices, job losses and the housing crisis.
Economic recessions typically led to increased suicides and hospital admissions for psychiatric care, usually within a year of the start of the decline, said Harvey Brenner, a professor at the University of North Texas Health Science Center.
"We've really not had such a combination of loss of jobs, income and housing in some time," he said. "We'd have to go back to the Great Depression" to find a time when so many negative trends coincided.
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