Peter Dreier, Professor of Politics at Occidental College, focuses on the human costs of economic downturns in an article published March 10 at HuffingtonPost.com.
Drier points to Dr. Harvey Brenner, a sociologist and public health expert at Johns Hopkins University, who has calculated that for every 1% increase in the unemployment rate (1.5 million people), we can expect an additional 47,000 deaths, including 26,000 deaths from heart attacks, about 1,200 from suicide, 831 murders, and 635 deaths related to alcohol consumption.
Drier writes, “For most people, losing their job, their life savings or pensions, or their home is traumatic, even when its through no fault of their own. Our individualistic culture leads people to blame themselves and to think of themselves as failures… Any way you slice it, a prolonged and deep recession is costly in both economic and human terms.”
Drier concludes that if the federal government issued a “social health impact report” as part of their updates on our nation’s economic health, “it would chart how Americans are coping — or not coping — by tracking the link between economic dislocations and the symptoms of stress — suicides, homicides, domestic violence, child abuse, heart attacks, and others.”
Source: http://tinyurl.com/cnvm2o
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Emotional healthcare professionals, including therapists and counselors, help people cope with stress and the everyday challenges of everyday life.