Deutsche Welle (English edition)
Mental health crisis a threat to the Philippine economy
In the Philippines, economic anxiety, declining mental health, the prohibitive cost of seeking help and the risk of further economic damage feed off each other in a vicious spiral.
The coronavirus sent Paul Dalmacio, 40, into a busy intensive care unit in Manila for 10 days. The severity of his case would keep him in the hospital for two months.
That was a little over half a year ago. But a sense of relief has failed to come alongside his recovery.
"I can't sleep every night. Sometimes I get flashbacks from the hospital," he said.
It's not just posttraumatic stress keeping him up at night. His finances keep him awake, too. Falling ill with the coronavirus left him with a 1.8 million Philippine peso hospital bill (€30,630, $37,020). With the
Philippine public health system and a private health insurance plan linked to his work covering only about 15% of his costs, he's been forced to find alternative ways to fund the rest.
"My family has been trying to help pay my bills. They solicited money from relatives and friends," he said. "There were a lot of lifestyle changes."
Seeking professional help for his anxiety has so far not been an option — his health insurance wouldn't cover it.
Dalmacio's story would be familiar to many. The coronavirus has made common a pattern of almost self-perpetuating conditions: economic precarity, brought on by a loss of livelihood or the crippling cost of falling ill with the virus, an accompanying mental health crisis without the resources to treat it and the combined crises compounding each others' effects.
"There's a vicious circle of sorts, when the economy goes downhill, that sets off a spiral where poor mental health is more widespread. And that, in turn, can have a feedback effect on the economy," Stephen Goetz, professor of economic development at Penn State told DW. "It's almost like a loop in