Economic Recession and the Mentally Ill
Apr 6th, 2010 by admin
Arizona is one of the States that has been most deeply affected by the current economic recession. It was one of the first States to feel the impact of the economic crunch due to the crash of the real estate market, so dominant here up to a few years go, and one of the last ones to see any sign of recovery. In fact, very few signs of recovery are hardly visible even now.
Of course a lot of sectors have been and still are affected by this downturn. Lots of people lost their jobs, which means they lost their medical insurance coverage as well. Lots lost their homes. Lots still are currently on the brink of losing everything they have worked for.
While it is no mystery that all these losses have affected people in deep psychological ways, very little has been written on this compared to the volumes that have been written in other areas affected by the current recession. However, this is an extremely important area that needs to be addressed, because the psychological impacts of stress tend often to be longer lasting and more insidious than the economic ones, as they affect people at the very core of who they are. Self-value, self-confidence, sense of security and sense of identity, in fact, are deeply shaken and at times people never fully recover from these impacts.
In addition to the people whose psychological health has been deeply affected by the economic downturn, there are also people who were already suffering from mental illness and who struggled to function and be productive in their lives. For all these people resources have been cut to the point where a lot of them currently have no or very limited access to treatment. “Tens of millions of dollars in state budget cuts since fiscal 2009 mean there is less money to pay for patients’ hospitalizations, psychiatric and counseling sessions and medications,” reported the Arizona Republic (AZ Republic, 3/19/10.)
One sign of this dismal situation is the increasing number of people who go to emergency rooms for serious mental illness or suicidal problems. Again, the Arizona Republic reports that at Maricopa County Medical Center, for instance, the number of patients who go to their emergency room for psychiatric problems has grown from “fewer than 10 per week to between 20 and 25 per week.”
Too often when we talk about economic issues, we forget to look at the enormous psychological impact that an unstable situation has on the human mind. For those who suffer from severe mental illness, no access to treatment and medication can mean losing whatever relief they used to get from a system that, though inadequate, was nonetheless available to them. Reports indicate that currently the system fails more than 80% of people who need their services. One of the results of this situation is that Arizona ranks number one in the country for the number of suicides. This is a terrible catastrophe that affects not only people suffering from mental illness, but their families and those who depend on them as well, and should affect all of us because it erodes the foundations of a democratic society based on the collective care for its citizens, particularly the ones who are ill and in need of help.
