A 2009 survey by Mental Health America, a mental health advocacy group, concluded that the unemployed were four times more likely to report symptoms of mental illness than a working individual. Mental health problems result from mass layoffs and unemployment, but the longer mental health problems go untreated, the less likely it is that a person can find another job, said Harvard’s Kessler.
“There’s got to be some investment not just in job creation, but in dealing with the emotional problems of people who are waiting around until you can create those jobs — or the economy could pay the price,” he said.
Indeed, that may already be happening. According to 2008 data collected by Kessler, mental illness costs society about $193 billion a year in lost earnings from absenteeism and lost productivity. “But given the current economic crisis, chances are that the true costs are now a bit larger than when we made the estimates,” Kessler said. The productivity loss will likely grow higher over the next decade as a greater number of people both demand mental health services from a shrinking public mental health system and suffer from untreated mental disorders, he said.
In the face of an overwhelmed public mental health system, some local nonprofit organizations, including 40Plus, are stepping in to help rebuild the confidence and drive of unemployed people before they reach their breaking point.
Although the group doesn’t offer mental health services, its weekly meetings are highly therapeutic, providing an outlet for professionals to bond, network and focus their career goals.
“All of us have been kicked in the stomach at one time or another,” said Sarfati, the group’s leader. “If you start out down in the dumps, this gives you an opportunity to sort of reposition yourself. They meet others in similar situations, develop relationships, go out for lunch, and all of a sudden there’s a place to go and things to do.”
Sarfati says the attendance at weekly meetings has quadrupled in 31
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2 years, with as many as 60 people attending.
The organization has helped Tatjana Meerman, a market research professional who was laid off two years ago, to position herself for a career shift from the private sector to the nonprofit development world working with wildlife and environmental causes. The 40Plus group has also helped to mend her wounded psyche after a grueling year-and-a-half of job hunting reaped more rejection than she was prepared to handle.
“Employers told me I was ‘overqualified,’ meaning I was too old,” said the 52-year-old Meerman, who lives in Potomac. “But I’m too young to retire, I’m ready to work, yet I’m being treated like I’m over the hill. That was extremely jarring and very demoralizing, and for a while there, I was definitely skirting depression.”
But discovering 40Plus in May was a game-changer for Meerman, who attends the weekly meetings. She recently completed the group’s intensive job-training program and has landed multiple interviews. “I’m in a very different place now,” she said. “It’s no longer a matter of ‘if,’ it’s a matter of ‘when,’ and for me I think that landing that ideal job will come in the next three months.”
Hirsch is a reporter and Pianin is the Washington editor for the Fiscal Times, an independent news organization that provides original reporting and analysis on fiscal and economic matters.
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