Financial Crisis Increasing Suicide Risk, WHO Warns

There's this wonderful drug that in generic form is dirt cheap. It works very well for many people suffering from depression. With that medication they can lose their job, be homeless and hungry and not be too bothered by it all. It's called Prozac (Fluoxetine). I call it "powdered happiness". Isn't modern technology fabulous?

Fred

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HEALTH/WELLNESS | 12.10.2008
Financial Crisis Increasing Suicide Risk, WHO Warns

Will financial woes increase depression worldwide?

With global stock markets plunging and some banks teetering on bankruptcy, the World Health Organization (WHO) is warning of a surge in suicides and mental illness. Just how depressing can it get?

As the number of foreclosures grow and the value of stock portfolios plummet, news reports from the US of the financial fallout are growing increasingly dire.

A 90-year-old woman in Ohio shot herself while being served an eviction notice. A 45-year-old businessman in Los Angeles murdered five members of his family before turning the gun on himself, saying in a suicide note that he had done so because of his troubling financial situation.

While these stories put a human face on the toll the financial crisis has taken, the Director General of the World Health Organization this may only be the tip of the iceberg.

"We should not be surprised or underestimate the turbulence and the likely consequences of the financial crisis,” Margaret Chan told a meeting of mental health care professionals in Geneva, Switzerland on Thursday this week.

As people struggle to cope with losing their homes or livelihoods, she said, "It should not come as a surprise if we continue to see more stresses, more suicides and more mental disorders."

Financial crisis not the origin of the problem


Traders aren't the only ones feeling the pain

To those who can recall the stories of bankers jumping out of windows across New York at the beginning of the Great Depression in 1929, the correlation between a financial crisis and an increase in suicide seems quite real.

But to Ulrich Hegerl, Director of the Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at the University of Leipzig and spokesperson for German Research Network on Depression and Suicidality, the reality is more complicated than that.

“A person with depression can blame their depression on whatever has been in the news recently, so some might begin to say that they are depressed because of the financial crisis. But the financial crisis isn’t necessarily the basis for the illness in the first place.”

Indeed, one study conducted by the WHO/EURO Multicentre Study on Suicidal Behavior showed that a majority of suicides and suicide attempts committed by men were done so by those who were considered “economically active” (i.e. employed). That same study showed little annual change in numbers of suicides from 1989 to 2002, despite great economic changes after the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Lack of care at root of problem


WHO is especially concerned about the mental health of those in low-income countries

Still, the problem is one that plagues many countries. A study released by WHO in 2001 identified depression as heading the list of disorders responsible for the global burden of disease in industrial countries.

According to the European Alliance Against Depression (EAAD), more than 58,000 persons in the countries of the European Union commit suicide annually. Europe-wide, dying from suicide accounts for the second highest risk of death for young men and the third highest risk for young women.

WHO chief Margaret Chanvstressed that the majority of people worldwide suffering from mental illness live in low- and middle-income countries, where there is an "abysmal lack of care," inadequate mental health care budgets and where victims suffer from social stigma and discrimination.

Hegerl likewise says that proper treatment is the only effective way to lower the prevalence of depression and suicide. And he warns against misinterpreting the statistics, which, according to the European Depression Association (EDA) show the number of cases of depression steadily increasing over the next decade.

“Simply because the financial crisis exists doesn’t mean we can assume a higher number of cases of depressed persons. It’s more complicated than that.”


Courtney Tenz

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Wall Street Bailout Won’t Do Much to Help Ailing Economy

Excellent paper from The Center for Economic and Policy Research. It's a paper that should be read and studied by all of our elected representatives. But alas, most of them are very deficient in their intellectual skills and too proficient in their skills of persuasion, deceit and blatant fabrication of alleged facts.

Fred

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Wall Street Bailout Won’t Do Much to Help Ailing Economy

by Mark Weisbrot

October 9, 2008, Modesto Bee (CA)
October 9, 2008, Lake Wylie Pilot (SC)
October 9, 2008, Tri-City Herald (WA)
October 9, 2008, Bellingham Herald (WA)

It is now clear the approval by Congress of President Bush’s $700 bailout package on Friday October 3rd has done nothing to ease the current financial crisis. Credit markets have worsened for several days after the bill passed the Congress. The stock market also plummeted to nearly ten-year lows.

So much for dire warnings from the Bush Administration that Congress was risking a Great Depression if it did not quickly fork over the dough. The bailout’s supporters said Congress had to do something to unfreeze the credit markets. It didn’t work.

There is a basic misunderstanding of the current financial crisis and economic recession that is widespread. Most people think that the current economic downturn – which will be officially designated a recession some time in the near future – is the result of the financial crisis. But this is not true. The current recession is mainly the result of a collapsing housing bubble. This bubble of more than $8 trillion dollars accumulated between 1996-2006, and it is only about 60 percent deflated so far. This means that even if all the problems in the financial system were miraculously solved tomorrow, the United States would still be facing a serious recession.

Of course the financial crisis can make this worse, as financial institutions cut back on lending and short-term interest rates for commercial borrowing rise. And we are indeed facing a serious financial crisis. But the bailout package is a wasteful and inefficient way of dealing with the problem of banks holding bad debt, mostly related to mortgages gone sour in the housing bust. It enables the U.S. Treasury Department to buy up “troubled assets” – mostly mortgage-related securities – from financial institutions, at prices that will likely be much higher than they are worth.

Economists across the political spectrum saw this as a wasteful and inefficient way to fill holes in banks’ balance sheets. Ordinary citizens and taxpayers saw the bailout as an enormous rip-off, and flooded Congress with phone calls, defeating the bailout on its first vote.

Indeed, the most important ways that our government is currently holding the financial crisis in check do not involve overpaying banks for bad assets. The Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury have intervened repeatedly to pour liquidity into the banking system. They have agreed to federally insure $3.4 trillion of money market mutual funds held by millions of Americans. This week the Fed created a new facility to buy commercial paper, the short-term debt issued by banks and corporations, where lending has been shrinking. The Federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the nation’s largest insurer, were also necessary to preserve the stability of the financial system.

All this is just the beginning of cleaning up the mess that has resulted from a de-regulated and un-regulated financial system gone wild. The government will have to take over more insolvent financial institutions and provide capital to others. It will have to take steps to help homeowners, to minimize foreclosures and evictions. And it will need to provide the largest fiscal stimulus package since the Great Depression, to prevent this recession from dragging on for years. The worst part about the bailout is that some politicians will say we can’t afford the necessary stimulus because we just added $700 billion to the national debt.

Americans will have to fight for measures that protect the public interest, not the interests of those who made this mess. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson made $163 million as CEO of Goldman Sachs in 2006. Now he and his former colleagues at Goldman are running the Wall Street bailout.

During the Asian financial crisis ten years ago, there was an expression for this kind of system: “crony capitalism.”

Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan. He is co-author, with Dean Baker, of Social Security: The Phony Crisis (University of Chicago Press, 2000), and has written numerous research papers on economic policy. He is also president of Just Foreign Policy.

Surviving the Recession

Back when I was in High School I remember having an American History teacher who told the class that during the Depression in 1929 he lived on a boat and went to graduate school at UC Berkeley. He advised us that one of the best things to do when another Depression or major Recession comes along the best way to live through it is to go to graduate school and survive it living cheap and acquiring a skill that can be useful when the economic crises comes to an end.

Along came the major Recession of the 70's. I remembered his advice and I had not used my VA educational benefits yet. That's when I decided to go to graduate school and get an MBA. The VA paid for everything and even paid for my housing. The Recession came to an end about the time I finished graduate school and within a month I had a good paying full-time job.

The moral of the story - In a major Recession (also known as a Depression) go to graduate school and wait it out.

Fred