By Aaron Allen, The Seattle Medium
In today’s fast-paced world, financial instability isn’t just a number on a bank statement—it’s a significant contributor to our mental and physical well-being. Money woes can lead to heightened stress and anxiety, often causing individuals to feel isolated and overwhelmed. The stigma surrounding debt can make it challenging for people to seek help, especially if they cut back on essentials like exercise and proper nutrition. Moreover, aggressive or insensitive debt collection practices can exacerbate these feelings, further impacting one’s health.
A substantial number of U.S. families grapple with financial strains. According to the 2019 Survey of Household Economics and Decision-Making, 3 in 10 adults struggled to meet their financial needs. Additionally, about 37% of adults reported being unable to handle short-term liquidity needs. The Census Bureau’s latest data reveals that 11% of U.S. adults lacked sufficient food in the past seven days, and 1 in 5 adults living in rental housing couldn’t pay their rent. These financial challenges not only strain consumer finances but also have ripple effects on health behaviors, outcomes, and overall family well-being.
The mental health implications are equally alarming. In the U.S., one in five adults lives with a mental illness. Of these, 7.8% experience major depressive episodes, and 19.1% suffer from anxiety disorders, often stemming from financial difficulties and poverty. The National Institute for Health Care Management reports that the prevalence rates of any mental illness and serious mental illness increased by 8% and 24%, respectively, in 2018 compared to 2008. A Pew Research Center study further indicates that worries about personal health and financial security correlate with higher levels of psychological distress. Such distress is linked to adverse health outcomes, including emotional exhaustion, reduced immune response, heart disease, and increased mortality.
According to Dr. Ben Johnson, a clinical psychologist, uncertainty caused by financial woes can be the cause of diseases within the body, most notably anxiety and depression.
“The fundamental basis behind financial hardship and usually most stress and anxiety is uncertainty,” says Johnson. “When people are uncertain, they tend to perseverate—that means to keep thinking about the same thing over and over again, usually without finding an answer or solution. When they’re under high stress, especially regarding finances, their thinking goes into high gear with what I call stressful thinking.”
“Anxiety and depression are the two biggest diseases going across the country now because so many people are in financial distress,” added Johnson. “Many are having trouble maintaining employment or structured employment. There’s volatility around them concerning people in their lives. And, of course, there’s a lot happening in society as a whole that breeds uncertainty.”
Larry Wissow from the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington Medicine says that it’s important to understand how our bodies respond to stress, especially stress that stems from financial concerns.
“Our bodies have lots of mechanisms to try to deal with the range of problems that we encounter on a day-to-day basis, and those mechanisms can make adjustments when triggered by circumstances like financial instability or crisis. Your body is constantly regulating,” says Wissow. “The simplest way to put it is that when your body, through any variety of ways, detects stress or something that is stressful or something that it has to be alert about, it changes a whole bunch of things within the body to prepare it for meeting that stress, whether it’s a physical, emotional, or existential threat.”
“When you think about it from a physical point of view, your heart rate and your blood pressure go up because you might have to sprint away from something or a thought process,” continued Wissow. “Your appetite may change because you’re not getting as much blood flow to your stomach as well as the muscles in your body, and even if your appetite doesn’t change, what you eat is going to feel different because your GI (gastrointestinal) system isn’t getting the same amount of blood. So, there are shifts that way.”
According to Dr. Johnson, there are several ways to release tension and help minimize the effects of stress on the body caused by financial instability or poverty.
“Things like deep breathing have been shown to be positive. Some kind of yoga or stretching or exercise can also be useful to physically release some of that pent-up tension,” says Johnson. “I mentioned the word tension because tension is the physical manifestation of stress. So, when I say physical, that means when stress shows up physically, it shows up as tension: your jaws get tight, your hands get tight, you feel tight in your muscles. Some people get a little dizzy or lightheaded, or they feel pressure around the head. All those things are ways that tension finds ways to show up physically.”
“The most important thing is to remember that you have to take care of yourself. If you don’t take care of yourself, you’ll be overwhelmed by the situation,” says Johnson. “If you’re taking care of yourself, you have a better chance of navigating what’s complicating things for you. Also, I always give as a guideline to people: Don’t do or stop doing things that, you know, in your own mind, don’t work for you.”