HEALTH DISPARITIES BLOG

June 27, 2008

Foreclosures and Health

Switchboard Miami provides crisis counseling for residents of the Miami-Dade area. Looking at who is calling Switchboard we get some sense of the mental burden of the current housing crisis.

From MiamiHerald.com:

During the fiscal year that ends this June, Switchboard has processed 9,525 complaints from people with housing problems. Some 4,600 requested emergency shelter after being evicted from their homes. About 400 needed urgent psychological assistance for depression, anxiety or drug dependency. Two were suicidal.

The foreclosure debacle has not only resulted in millions of dollars in losses and thousands of homeless residents, but it has also caused mental and emotional turmoil. Agencies such as Switchboard can't do much more than attempt to treat the symptoms with therapy and referrals to credit counseling agencies.

A lengthy USAToday article on the subject reports that suicide rates increase during times of economic turmoil:

In an article published in 2005 by Cambridge University Press, researchers compared suicide data in Australia from January 1968 through August 2002 with economic problems such as unemployment and mortgage interest rates. The study found that economic trends are closely associated with suicide risk, with men showing a heightened risk of suicide in the face of economic adversity.

And an AP story says that the burden of stress from this financial storm can have a negative affect on health:

Although most people appear to be managing their debts all right, perhaps 10 million to 16 million are "suffering terribly due to their debts, and their health is likely to be negatively impacted," says Paul Lavrakas, a research psychologist and AP consultant who analyzed the results of the survey. Those are people who reported high levels of debt stress and suffered from at least three stress-related illnesses, he says.

That finding is supported by medical research that has linked chronic stress to a wide range of ailments.

Here in Cleveland, Project Hype participants were asked to photograph things that had an affect on their hypertension control. They responded with photos of abandoned houses in their Cleveland neighborhoods.

Clearly the housing crisis is not just a Wall Street problem. It's also a my street problem.