Financial stress beginning to tax mental-health services, too

A tidal wave of anxiety is washing over America, from Wall Street's concrete canyons to the lettuce fields of California, propelled by the mortgage industry collapse, high gas prices, tight credit and rising unemployment.

Operators of telephone help lines, insurers, hospital administrators and therapists, interviewed over the last month, say the financial services crisis, which has caused an explosion of foreclosures, is sending everyday people to mental-health services at levels not seen since the 9/11 terror attacks.

"It's shattering people's dreams of having a piece of the pie," said Victoria Tabios, who works at a mental-health agency in Stockton, Calif., a city at the epicenter of the worst U.S. housing crisis since the Great Depression. "There's a sense of hopelessness, irritability and anger."

In New York, calls to the Hopeline network for people with depression or suicidal thoughts leapt 75 percent to 10,368 in the 11 months ending in July 2008. Chicago-based ComPsych Corp., the world's largest provider of employee assistance programs, logged 21 percent more calls seeking help for stress from financial pressures in July than they received a year earlier, and hospital admissions for psychiatric services are up 10 percent this year over last in claims submitted to UnitedHealth Group Inc., the largest U.S. health insurer.

"The 9/11 spike was probably higher initially, but this has been more sustained," said ComPsych's Chief Executive Officer Richard Chaifetz in a telephone interview. He predicted the economic turmoil and psychological fallout will "get worse and deeper" in the coming year.

Even people who haven't lost jobs or homes feel the anxiety. A poll taken for the American Psychological Association in April found that three of four Americans are under stress because of money woes. In a more detailed poll conducted in September 2007, almost half said such stress is hurting their professional and personal lives.

"We're reached a tipping point where anxiety about the economy is pervasive," said Dan Abrahamson, assistant executive director of the association's practice directorate.

In Stockton, one in 25 households received a foreclosure notice from April to June, the highest rate in the U.S. At the same time, the number of people seeking counseling from Tabios' agency grew almost 10 percent. Marielena Leon, a mother of three, felt such despair after getting a foreclosure notice she could scarcely leave her bed; Tabios' own father, facing the loss of his home after he borrowed against it to open a failed restaurant, is being treated for depression, Tabios said in an interview.

Leon, 29, is a banker's daughter who grew up in Nicaragua and Mexico City and moved to Stockton with her husband, a building contractor. In recent years, she endured divorce, disability and a 75 percent rise in the variable mortgage payments on her home.

Last October, she fell into foreclosure and, in July, she and her three sons moved out, just ahead of the eviction team from the sheriff's department.

Leon said she worries most about her three boys, ages 7, 5 and 4. Sometimes, she said, her oldest son, Norman, will stop in the middle of play and just sit, staring blankly. One time, when she asked why, he said he was wondering why his mother is so sad.

Norman was resisting going to school. She later learned from a school counselor that Norman was worrying about the family's finances.

"The counselor told me, 'He's scared that someone will try to take you and the house and that when he comes back home, he's not going to see you again,' " Leon said.

ValueOptions Inc., the fourth-largest U.S. provider of behavioral health and wellness services, said calls for assistance with home foreclosures, bankruptcy and other financial hardships have grown 89 percent this year over 2007. The closely held company, based in Norfolk, Virginia, provides counseling and referrals to 5 million workers.

Worrying about finances and housing "causes marital conflict, extreme stress, anxiety, depression" and can disrupt workers' productivity "because their mind is on the financial crisis they're dealing with instead of their job," said ValueOptions Vice President Rich Paul.

Hospital admissions for psychiatric and substance-abuse services have increased as much as 10 percent this year from last year in claims submitted to Minnetonka, Minn.-based UnitedHealth.

Liz Stevens, a 22-year real estate veteran who rose to be a regional manager for Prudential California Realty, invested $500,000 to open her own franchise in Berkeley in 2006 and hired 23 agents. On Aug. 1, she let the remaining 10 agents go and closed the doors.

Stevens still wonders how things went bad so quickly. "I'm educated, I'm intelligent," Stevens said in an interview. "I have a business plan. These things aren't supposed to happen to people like me. It's very easy for me to feel ashamed."