Stress of poverty takes toll on mental health
Living on the breadline isn’t just about the struggle to put food on the table or pay the bills – it plays with how our brains are wired. By Josephine Franks.
ZOE* hasn’t smoked meth for a couple of weeks, but today she’s considering it.
The 17-year-old is sitting on the back step of the central Auckland hostel that’s been her home for the past three months. She stretches theends of her sweatpants over her bare feet, tightens the drawstring of her hoodie around her pale face.
Her youth payment money has just come in, the amount displayed on her phone: $73. She reflects on what it feels like to survive on so little: ‘‘Mentally it f…. you because you just feel worthless’’.
She’ll get another $50 in her bank account, but food is expensive. And meth? ‘‘Round here for girls it’s pretty much free.’’
‘‘I’m probably gonna have to smoke that s… again. I don’t want to, but I don’t want to be hungry.’’
Poverty is closely linked to mental health. People used to think of it as a one-way street where people with evere mental health problems ‘‘drifted’’ to lower socioeconomic groups, psychotherapist Kyle MacDonald says.
The relationship is actually the other way round, he says: poverty causes issues with mental health. A study from Princeton University shows being preoccupied with financial stress causes a drop in cognitive function equivalent to a 13-point dip in IQ, or the loss of an entire night’s sleep. Scarcity ‘‘consumes your mental bandwidth’’, the authors found.
That leaves people in poverty less able to solve the problem they are stuck in. It affects decisionmaking abilities, leaving people vulnerable to exploitative fixes that only make short-term sense – high-cost loans, for example.
A child growing up in poverty is three times more likely to have mental health problems than one not in poverty. In deprived communities the youth suicide rate is twice that of wealthier communities. Last year, 11 per cent of children – 125,700 – were living in material hardship, defined as going without six out of 17 basics, such as heating or fresh fruit, because of cost.
The rates were higher for
Ma¯ ori and Pacific children: 20 per cent and 24 per cent, respectively.
Growing up in poverty can affect children into adulthood, even if financial circumstances change: ‘‘[It] can leave people with a lasting sense of themselves as worthless and a sense that they will not be able to fulfil their dreams,’’ University of Auckland school of psychology Associate Professor Kerry Gibson says.
She co-authored the Child Poverty Action Group’s review into child poverty and mental health. Poverty impacts a range of factors that influence mental health, she says. Worrying about food creates stress for both parents and children, overcrowding can increase family tension, and the stress of living in a cold house significantly increases the risk of mental health problems in teenagers.
Parents working two jobs and getting home late may be less able to provide the sensitive care a child needs, despite wanting the best for their children, Gibson says.
In her work as co-ordinator for Auckland Action Against Poverty (AAAP), Brooke Pao Stanley sees up close how living on the breadline impacts mental health.
People are resilient, but ‘‘we shouldn’t be forcing them to hold so much’’, she says. ‘‘They’re very stressed out and tired, they don’t have a lot of capacity to deal with things.
‘‘It really plays with people’s ability to believe in themselves, to fight for the things that they need.’’
Huria Madani says it took her time to accept she ‘‘needs and deserves support, and everyone else on the benefit needs and deserves that support’’.
The 32-year-old Wellingtonian is disabled and gets the supported living payment because several health conditions and chronic depression mean she can’t work. After rent for emergency housing, she’s left with $228 a week.
That amount says volumes to
her: ‘‘That I am not worthy to live with dignity and that I am considered useless and therefore not worth the investment.’’
She’s saving for an e-scooter so she can get around Wellington without Ubers, but putting away money means going without food. She needs $6000 of dental work. Last week she put toothpaste on Afterpay.
Thinking about money ‘‘consumes you when you’re this poor’’, she says. ‘‘It feels like I can’t participate in society. It’s depressing, and it’s sad.’’
Madani says while her depression stems from trauma, it is exacerbated by being poor.
While she has some
‘We’re choosing for our rangatahi lives of subsistence . . . rather than ensuring they have what they need to thrive.’ LIFEWISE YOUTH HOUSING SERVICE LEADER AARON HENDRY
counselling covered by ACC, she’s struggled to get further support through community mental health.
Gibson says the effects of poverty on mental health are ‘‘compounded by the obstacles it creates to getting timely help’’. Even if free mental health services are available, there may be limited means to pay for a GP appointment for a referral or transport to get there, or to take off work to attend.
The impact of poverty on mental health is entrenched by a two-tier mental health system where accessing substantive therapy means paying for it, MacDonald says.
Gibson wants to see the Government zero in on poverty as part of its mental health response. Bolstering resources, shortening
waiting lists and addressing failing mental health services isn’t enough unless the underlying issue of poverty is also tackled, she says.
It’s also important to recognise, Gibson says, that many children living in poverty will have resources that mitigate the harmful effects of poverty, including loving wha¯ nau, cultural values that sustain them, or a supportive community.
People will provide each other with the support they don’t get elsewhere, Pao Stanley says.
‘‘They can share really easily. They have hardly anything, and yet they’re sharing everything they have. I feel like the world is held together by love and solidarity that is practised by people in these communities.’’
Zoe sees that in the group of
teens who will pool their money for a meal, or the homeless people who look out for her: ‘‘I’ll walk down K Rd and they’ll be like, ‘do you want a feed babe’. They look after me and they have no money at all. This is the homeless people – and the rich people just walk past.’’
Risky situations come out of not having enough money. Zoe makes off-hand mention of being arrested so she can eat in the cells, selling sex to buy food, and stealing.
Aotearoa needs to reckon with the fact it has set benefit levels so low, Lifewise youth housing service leader Aaron Hendry says. ‘‘We’re choosing for our rangatahi lives of subsistence . . . rather than ensuring they have what they need to thrive.’’
Minister for Social
Development Carmel Sepuloni says she recognises that living in hardship impacts mental health, and promised a review of youth payment rates as part of the Government’s work on ‘‘revamping the welfare system’’.
But for now, Zoe is stuck in her hostel, lonely and bored, unable to do the things normal 17-year-olds do. ‘‘I lose friends because I can’t go out and like go get my nails done or some normal s... that girls do.
‘‘All I do all day is just sleep, because I’ve got nothing else to do. You get depressed. They want us to succeed?
‘‘Don’t put us in houses where it’s just crackheads and jail people on bracelets and domestics all the time.’’