Depression often accompanies unemployment
By NED B. HUNTER
nhunter@jacksonsun.com
• January 24, 2010
After 16 years as a stay-at-home mom, Renee Parker suddenly found herself in need of a job but had few prospects.
The factories where she once worked are closed.
Jobs through temporary services never turned into full-time jobs.
Her husband's annuity quit paying its benefits when he died of cancer in August 2007.
There was no life-insurance money. The policy had lapsed four months before he died.
The lack of income and the stress of trying to raise two daughters, pay a mortgage and make two car payments on a monthly Social Security death-benefit check pushed Parker toward cocaine addiction.
"I got crazy," Parker said. "I was scared, scared to death."
While Parker's fall into drug addiction from unemployment is an extreme example, it is not uncommon, said Jim Jones, program manager and counselor at Pathways in Jackson. The stress of short- and long-term unemployment can cause people to alienate family and friends, lose their self-esteem and become chronically depressed. Unemployment also can push people toward drug or alcohol use, which is how many people already deal with everyday stress, Jones said.
If depression turns to hopelessness, a person may even choose to end his life.
"When a person does not see any other way out," Jones said, "regardless of what anyone else can see, they start considering things they don't normally consider."
The risk of suicide increases by more than 50 percent when a person is depressed, according to the American Association for Suicidology's Web site. While the site has no research linking suicide to unemployment, it does state that the nation's suicide rate traditionally increases in times of economic crisis.
Tennessee's suicide rate increased by nearly 16 percent in 2008, the year the nation's economy plummeted into the worst recession since the Great Depression.
A total of 965 Tennesseans committed suicide in 2008, according to a Wall Street Journal survey compiled from the most recent data. In 2007, 833 Tennesseeans committed suicide.
While some form of depression from unemployment is likely to occur within all age groups, Dr. Mary Dew said those most likely to suffer depression are adults age 50 to 60.