Press Room: The Press-Enterprise
Mental, social effects weighed
ECONOMY: A Cal State San Bernardino summit Thursday looked at the psychological costs of struggling financially.
10:00 PM PST on Thursday, December 18, 2008
By LOU HIRSH
The Press-Enterprise
As the Inland region deals with the economic downturn, the psychological and social impacts for consumers could prove even tougher to shake off in the months and possibly years ahead.
In a Thursday summit at Cal State San Bernardino, health and social service experts said foreclosed homes, depleted stock portfolios and lost retirement savings are already taking their toll.
Feelings of depression, fractured family relationships, the potential for increasing drug use and spousal abuse are among the human costs.
Professor and clinical psychologist Ed Teyber said talks with his counseling clients indicate they feel a sense of losing control over aspects of lives they once thought were safe and predictable. Rising anxiety is common.
"For a lot of people in the last three months, the rug got pulled out," Teyber told an audience of about 100 at a forum presented by the university's College of Social and Behavioral Sciences.
As in past economic downturns dating back to the Great Depression, Teyber said current crises likely are breeding in some a sense of failure, which negatively affects relationships with others if the person doesn't reach out for help.
Gary Madden, director of the 211 phone referral system operated in San Bernardino County by Inland Empire United Way, said calls for assistance to meet basic needs have been rising since July. In fact, as early as June 2007, Madden said program operators found that almost half the assistance requests -- 42 percent -- were coming from the 10 San Bernardino County ZIP codes with the highest home foreclosure rates.
The demand will stretch the resources of many social service agencies, he said.
Doug Rowand, president of Arrowhead United Way, said consumers' falling confidence is causing them to give less to charities, which will put more pressure on agencies that help those in need.
Budget cuts are already taking their toll on agencies such as the San Bernardino County Department of Behavioral Health, said Deputy Director Gary Atkins, just when demand for its programs is rising.
Economists at Thursday's forum said this year's convergence of bad fiscal news has heightened the psychological fallout that has always accompanied downturns. But they emphasized that the federal government is using several tools to fix the economy and restore calm that weren't available at the time of the Great Depression of the 1930s.
While recent bank capital infusions and other Treasury and Federal Reserve actions have yet to see full results, Cal State economist Tom Pierce said current economic indicators, including rising unemployment, are still nowhere as bad as they were during the Depression.
"Credit is beginning to loosen," Cal State finance professor Jim Estes said. "You just haven't seen the effects (of federal actions) yet."
Estes said federal remedies should start to see some positive effects starting in the summer of 2009, though Inland unemployment and foreclosure trends could still continue for several more months. In the meantime, he said the stock market appears to have bottomed out, and those in the market should stay invested if they don't need the money immediately for other purposes.
Reach Lou Hirsh at 951-368-9559 or lhirsh@PE.com