Ailing economy has impact on well-being

On her end of the Clark County Crisis Line, Marlene Burrows hears the same story again and again: A spouse lost a job and the family can’t pay the rent. More callers are feeling stressed, anxious and depressed.

When she makes mental health referrals, she hears more of the same scenario from that end, too: Programs funded by state money or community donations are feeling the economic pinch and don’t have as many resources to help.

“It’s become more difficult for people to find jobs and there are fewer resources in the community in terms of people getting what they need,” said Burrows, the crisis service’s program manager. “They’re falling through a large crack.”

The sour economy is causing more stressors than people know how to handle, mental health experts say, and it’s bringing in a wider clientele than clinics and crisis centers can cover.

Some Clark County mental health clinics have some of the longest waiting lists they’ve seen in years, and are scrambling for more funding to keep up with the caseloads. But they are finding that there is no more money.

Not all people seeking help have anxiety or depressive disorders. Lots of people are going through rocky times and just need someone to talk to, local experts say.

The crisis line has felt the pinch over the last two years. The call volume has doubled from 700 to at least 1,400 a month since 2006, which Burrows mainly attributes to the ailing economy.

What once used to be a crisis call about one issue has turned into a call about a host of worries centered around finances, she said. Some callers have been diagnosed with a mental health disorder and have lost health care coverage after losing their job.

Not knowing where else to go, they call the crisis line.

“We’re getting calls from people who … just got laid off or can’t pay rent. (There’s) lots of calls about how to get medication,” Burrows said.

These frustrations aren’t isolated. Nearly half of the populace say they are worried about job stability and 66 percent are concerned about housing costs, according to a report released last week by the American Psychiatric Association.

These worries are manifested in different ways: Some people are becoming more prone to anxiety and depression because of the stress.

Others, who suffer from pre-existing anxiety and depression disorders, find them exacerbated by job stress.

Patients are reporting more insomnia problems than ever before, local experts say.

Worries over finances are disrupting sleep for many patients, which is increasing the number of sleep medications prescribed at these clinics.

Lauretta Young, chief of psychiatry at Kaiser Permanente Northwest, said the number of mental health intake calls at Kaiser clinics in Clark and Multnomah counties is 25 to 35 percent over this time last year.

“That does not seem to be a typical, seasonal variation,” Young said.

At the Wellness Project, a program that offers free mental health counseling to low-income clients, patients now have to wait nine months to see a counselor. This is a 50 percent increase over the wait in April 2007, said Antonia Mueller, clinical program manager for Community Services Northwest, an umbrella organization of the project.

The issue at hand: More people are seeking help for anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts because they’ve lost the one thing that impacts their personal and financial stability the most: employment.

“People are trying to cope with not having money or unemployment. It’s basically shifting their identity,” Mueller said. “By losing your housing or your job, you have to shift how you live.”

“We’ve doubled our volunteers, but it’s not keeping up,” she added.

Kit Corey, a counselor at the Vancouver counseling and training firm Solutions Employee Assistance, said she’s never in her 20-year career heard as much talk about financial stress as she does now.

She refers some clients to outside low-income based clinics. The Wellness Project isn’t the only clinic with lengthy waiting lists, said Young, who cited long waits at Columbia River Mental Health among others.

“It’s a scary time,” Corey said. “There’s no place for them to go.”