When the topic of income comes into play, people get
uneasy. Asking someone what their annually salary is a year can come to a bit
of an offense to most people. In today’s day and age, money rules our lives. It
controls what kind of house we live in, what kind of provisions we can make for
our family, and most importantly, it is what drives us to be the type of people
that we are. Money, I believe, is a dangerous thing because with too much money
comes power, hence lack of money comes lack of power to be able to do anything
and everything you would want to do in life. That lack of power is what can
bring the problems in this world. The problem I want to focus on with lack of
income is its relation to depression and how these two factors can coincide
with each other.
I feel that depression is highly seen in those of a lower
social economic class because of the stress that comes while living with a lack
of poverty. Stressing about how one can feed themselves, let alone their
family, stress on whether or not they will be able to afford next month’s bill,
and the more and more one’s stresses, sooner or later they fall into depression
that could go with substance abuse or worse, suicide. Thinking about environmental
stressors, in the internet article by S.A Stansfeld (1997) suggests that
stressors such as life events and chronic difficulties can be seen more so in
those of a socioeconomically lower status which can be an explanation as to why
the lower social class shows higher proportion of depression and other
disorders because they have less access to material resources that people could
find helpful in their everyday lives. I really do believe in this statement
because those of a lower social class do not have the ability to attain as many
resources as those who are provided with more money in their income. This leads
them to stress, or feel as if they are worthless because they cannot provide
for themselves as much as they would want too and it could lead them to a dark
depression or the possibility of other mental illnesses.
It can also be said that the household is a reflection of
one’s occupation and the provisions they can make for their family. It is in
the household where the larger social and economic order impacts the individual
who may be struggling financially, exposing them to a variety of different
hardships, frustration, and struggles. The anxiety of the difficulty of trying
to provide clothes, food, bills, and care for the health of each individual
family member can truly bring out the difficulties of one’s life, maybe leaving
them to feel as if they cannot do anything right if they cannot provide for
their loved on in a civilized way. The scholarly internet article titled;
Hardship and Depression, explains how the ability to meet family obligations
have consequences for emotional well-being (Ross, 1985). Consequences resulting
in depression are what I feel like it would lead too. Not being able to provide
for your family because your lack of income is too great, would make one feel
like a failure. A failure in providing for their family is probably the biggest
emotional strains one could bare and that it could very well lead to
depression. Going back to Stansfeld (1997), it is said that it is to be
considered that with unemployment can certainly be related to higher levels of
depression, including anxiety. Those of
an upper and higher social class can be easily assumed that they are stress
free because no matter what economical punch they may be hit with, they have
enough finical needs to be able to take care of it. Unfortunately, it is not
that way at all for those who are suffering a lack of income. In fact I believe
that it is the number one stressor for one’s life that cannot provide for
oneself, which results them to feel no self-worth for themselves or a sense of
well- being.
I feel that if one cannot provide for themselves over the
simple pleasures of life, such as water, food, and shelter it is a direct
correlation of bringing depression into the equation because one cannot say
that they are not anxious on how they are going to provide for their next meal.
One cannot say that the thought of them sleeping outside in the cold does not
bring a form of sadness to themselves. In an internet article written by
Michael Marmot (2002)
explains how in asking if money matters, there is an apparent relation of income to health as a thought to
question the poverty or inequality; and the role of material and psychosocial
factors in generating inequalities in health. What I believe this is saying is
that people are beginning to question just what kind of relationship that comes
between low income poverty and possibly depression or other mental health
issues. I seem to believe that with the stress and anxiety build up, it is
starting to be seen to others as the correlation between lack of income and
depression.
I have been talking a lot about providing for one’s
family, but I have not really discussed much about the possibility if someone
is struggles this bad financially alone. This person probably feels like they
have no one to depend on but themselves and that has got to be a huge emotional
strain for a person to have to carry. Kurt Organista (1994) explains that most
patients with the poorest outcome were those with initially high symptoms of
depression and they were not living with spouses or partners. From this, I
believe that since these patients were living by themselves, they were using
the little money they made in other ways in order for them to feel better about
their lives. I can assume that the majority of these patients were probably
spending lots of money on alcohol and abusing drugs because they did not have
anyone else with them to tell them otherwise. They did not have someone to be
there for them in their time of need, and probably felt that just drinking and
drugs would be enough to fix the situation for them. In most cases you see
people, especially homeless people, use alcohol or drugs as an antidepressant,
but in reality it is just making it so much worse for them since alcohol
increases those sad feelings for people, especially ones who are depressed and
are not diagnosed with it yet. The scariest thing of the low income is that one
may not be able to afford to see a doctor to ever be medically diagnosed with
depression.
Lack of
income can come to in so many different forms of problems, it is difficult when
nowadays people use money in order to fix everything, but not everyone can be
that lucky. Low income social class people need to fight harder, and work
harder in order to get the provisions that they need, and there are just some
people who cannot live up to that amount of pressure and could just break. I
really do believe that depression has a lot to do from being an output of
someone with a low income because money is so depended on these days and
without it, it is like the survival of the fittest in order to make ends meet.
References
Marmot, M, (
March,2002). The Influence Of Income On Health: Views Of An Epidemiologist.
Organista, K, (
June,1994). Cognitive-behavioral therapy for depression in low-income and
minority
medical outpatients: Description of a program and exploratory analyses. Cognitive
therapy and Research. RetrievedNovember,2014
from http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02357778#
from http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02357778#
Ross, C, (
December,1985).Hardships and Depression. JSTOR. RetrievedNovember,2014 from
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2136655?uid=16796144&uid=3739656&uid=2&uid=3&uid=67&uid=16749424&uid=62&uid=3739256&sid=21105195054073
Stansfeld, S, (
February,1997). Explaining social class differences in depression and
well-being.
Original
Paper. RetrievedNovember,2014 from
http://download.springer.com/static/pdf/987/art%25253A10.1007%25252Fs001270050014.pdf%3Fauth66=1415913454_12793d65827d833427e390909f671855%26ext=.pdf
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