The Current Recession Looks More Like the Great Depression to Those With Mental Illness

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A great thing or even a necessary thing in dealing with mental illness is stability. Turbulence (financial, emotional, physiological) means being on the defensive most all of the time, constantly adapting one’s mental fortress to changing environments. There’s no time in the storm to rest and heal. Despite what you may hear, mental illness involves healing like any other illness; it’s not simply a matter of changing variables (behaviors, chemicals) and becoming more “in balance” and, thus, “well."

You would assume then that recessions would be especially bad for people suffering from mental illness. A new study out in the journal PLOS ONE bears this out, finding that the rate of unemployment in the European Union for those with mental health problems rose at more the twice the rate of the general population since the start of the current recession. In 2006, the rate was 7.1 percent for people without mental health problems, compared to 12.7 percent for people with. In 2010, this climbed to 9.8 percent and 18.2 percent respectively. That’s a rate of increase of 2.7 percent for “without” population and 5.5 percent for those with mental health problems.

So, if you’re living with mental illness in the EU the recession probably looks a bit more akin to a depression. The numbers show a situation much worse even for men: 21.7 percent of men with mental health problems were unemployed in 2010, compared with about half that in 2006. That’s nearly a quarter of the population, which is indeed Great Depression unemployment levels.

This bit of research is taken from the much-larger Eurobarometer study, a massive survey of some 20,000 Europeans covering a wide variety of topics. One additional thing the study found was that at least some portion of the unemployment difference came from stigmatizing attitudes toward those with mental illness. That is, in countries with a more widespread belief that mentally ill individuals were dangerous, there was a higher unemployment rate. (I'll work on digging up statistics on how that belief has changed over the past decade; should be interesting.)

"Our study emphasises that one important implication of stigma and discrimination is exclusion from employment,” notes study co-author Professor Graham Thornicroft of Kings College London. “During periods of economic recession, attitudes to people with mental health problems may harden, further deepening social exclusion. Governments need to be aware of these risks, and employers need to be aware of their legal duty to comply with the Equality Act to support people with mental health problems coming into, and staying in, employment."

I’d be interested to see this same study done in the United States, where mental health care lags notoriously, with 89.3 million Americans living in federally-designated Mental Health Professional Shortage Areas. “Over 60 percent of adults with a diagnosable disorder and 70 percent of children in need of treatment do not receive mental health services, and nearly 90 percent of people over age 12 with a substance use or dependence disorder did not receive specialty treatment for their problem,” reports a 2011 Kaiser Family Foundation study. Nor, it seems, are they likely to recieve a job giving them adequate health care to get needed help either.

Reach this writer at michaelb@motherboard.tv.