As the economic crisis gathered steam last year, Americans became increasingly stressed out and experienced worsened mental health — a trend that continues today, according to a landmark Gallup-Healthways poll out this week.
Done nearly every day in 2008 and still ongoing, the survey of 355,334 people is believed to be the largest, longest and most thorough poll showing how emotional well-being shifts with economic changes.
The survey produces a so-called Emotional Health Index (EHI) — a measure that weighs negatives such as depression, worry and stress against the positive feelings a person experienced the day before the survey.
Among highlights of the poll:
•Stress shot up over 2008, peaking in the fall and winter as the economic crisis deepened, then continuing high through February. The 10 least happy days of 2008 all were in the last quarter.
•Emotional well-being overall dropped, too, driven largely by declines in mental health for the poorest people.
•Americans' moods were ultra-sensitive to economic news. Well-being plunged on days when the Dow lost big and with reports of high jobless claims.
•A state's EHI correlated with high rates of death from ailments such as heart disease, says Gallup analyst Raksha Arora. States with a lot of open space or sunshine — Hawaii, Alaska, Wyoming — had some of the best emotional health even as the economy sank. Many poorer and Rust Belt states — West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky — were worst off.
•There were few racial differences, but Hispanics, the nation's largest and fastest growing minority, had the worst emotional health all year long.
The poll was a joint effort between Gallup and Healthways, a disease-management company.
POLL: 21% scrambling to pay medical bills
The poll findings are no surprise to anyone on the front lines of mental health care, says David Baron, chairman of the psychiatry department at Temple University School of Medicine in Philadelphia. "This recession has touched people in virtually every walk of life," Baron says.
The link between the EHI and illness makes sense, adds Stevan Hobfoll, a psychologist at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. Depression increases smoking and drinking and discourages exercise; it also raises the risk of heart disease, he says.
The survey shows that those 30 to 55 years old, prime earning years, may be suffering most from the bad economic news, says Gallup's Arora.
And these are also prime-time decades for raising families. But that's getting harder in such a tough economic climate, says Julie Moghal, a psychologist based at CHOC Children's Hospital in Orange, Calif. "So many parents are feeling guilty and upset about how to handle economic reverses with their children," she says.
Hispanics take it hard
The particularly poor emotional health of Hispanics may be caused by cultural qualities as well as their economic roles, according to experts.
Although women overall have higher depression rates than men, Hispanic women have the highest rates of all women, says Caroline Clauss-Ehlers of Rutgers University, a bilingual psychologist who counsels many Hispanic families in New York. Latinos take great pride in caring well for their families, "and if you're the mother, and the family isn't doing well, a lot of the women feel they're to blame," she says.
Hispanic men and women feel shame if they can't take good care of their families — a hard act when the economy is nose-diving. This shame can prompt people to isolate themselves, keeping anguish private so they don't get the support they need, Clauss-Ehlers says.
Many Hispanic adults send money home regularly to even-poorer family members in other countries, she adds, so the recession has amplified pressure.
In the USA, a lot of Hispanics work as small-business owners dependent on Hispanic customers, who have lost work in this economic crisis as contractors, construction workers, painters or day laborers, according to Estuardo Rodriguez, spokesman for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. With the building market collapsed, Hispanics have taken a hard hit in this recession, he says.
Someone who knows that too well is 35-year-old Raul DeAnda of Antioch, Calif. He had a good job in home construction, owned a house and supported three children with his wife expecting a fourth, when the unexpected slammed down on them in May: The company he worked for went out of business.
DeAnda spent nine months searching for work without success as savings dwindled and bills piled up. Now the family is facing foreclosure. Just last week, he latched onto another construction job, but he and his wife both fear it may be temporary and worry that they're so behind in mortgage payments they're going to lose their house, anyway.
He's a nervous wreck. And his wife, Lorena De La Cruz, minces no words on how she feels: "I'm very stressed, anxious, depressed and worried about our family." The longer it has gone on, the more worried she has become, De La Cruz says. With four children 2 months to 7 years old, she can't easily join the work force herself and prays her husband can keep this construction job.
Support system weakens
Even if lower-income people seek counseling for recession-related stress, they may have to wait a long time or never get help, says a report on public mental-health services out Wednesday that suggests one reason why poorer adults may be sinking in emotional well-being as the economy worsens.
The mental health system that serves them was on the economic chopping block all over the USA last year, with widespread slashes in services, says Michael Fitzpatrick, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, which put out the report.
Meanwhile, many therapists treating more upscale patients are hearing about more money-related traumas and pleas for reduced rates. As the Gallup-Healthways survey shows, stress has risen across the board.
Kathy Seus, 45, of Chicago was upbeat and fairly optimistic after losing her sales job in January. With experience in sales, marketing and management, plus an MBA from the University of Chicago, she hoped a strong effort would help her land another job. Two months later, optimism has waned and depression is setting in. There's no job in sight.
Meanwhile, her property taxes for March have gone unpaid. So has her mortgage, because she tried to negotiate a lower payment and says the bank wouldn't work with her until she stopped paying.
"For the first time in my life, I'm really scared and very worried about losing a house in which I've invested every cent I have and have lived in for 13 years," she says.
Many friends have slipped away as she has struggled to keep her head above water, Seus says. "They offer no comfort. I tell people I lost my job and am worried about losing my house, and they tell me how they've had to cut back on manicures."
She keenly appreciates those who have shown empathy. "The few that have been there for me have been absolute lifesavers," she says. "I hope that one day I can return the favor."
Supportive friends are vital for people facing economic crisis, says Lanny Berman, executive director of the American Association of Suicidology. A lack of supportive relationships is tied to higher suicide rates among the unemployed, Berman says. Unemployed adults have two to four times the suicide rates of employed people, but coping skills in hard times vary widely, he adds.
Suicides spiked during the Great Depression but didn't increase in later recessions lasting an average of 10 months, according to the suicidology group's website. The current recession is 15 months long and counting.
The Gallup-Healthways poll shows a lot of people are suffering in this scary economic crisis, "and we need to be more concerned about what happens with suicide now," Berman says. When someone is in despair over economic problems, "give them support and see that they get help for mental health problems," he says. "This is the time to be our brother's keeper."
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