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Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Tough times & mental health care
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
An Atlanta attorney who erves on the board of directors for Metropolitan Counseling Services, a nonprofit provider of mental health services to adults over 18, writes about a woman who killed herself over her home’s foreclosure.
“A few days later on CNN, a young woman in Southern California professed thoughts of suicide as she contemplated the loss of her home in foreclosure. She is undoubtedly not alone in what has come to be described as “debt depression,” a term encapsulating the rising tide of negative mental health consequences of such hardships among those struggling with job loss, home foreclosure, rising food and gas prices, and declining wages.”
He continues: “What Americans are experiencing economically is clearly not ‘all in our heads,’ or, as former U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm, a John McCain adviser, recently put it, a “mental recession.” But the increasing difficulty of the struggle to make ends meet and avoid homelessness is taking a correspondingly harsh toll on the mental health of our citizens.”
Do you see signs of Americans coping with high levels of anxiety?
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