HYPE blog: No money, more problems?

It was around the time of being asked to analyse and write a paper investigating the link between financial debt and mental health, that the deeply saddening story of Jerome Rogers’ suicide was being retold by the BBC 'How debt kills - Jerome Rogers: 1995 - 2016'. Jerome Rogers was from South East London and only 20 years old when he died by suicide following a period of financial crisis coinciding with a number of related stressors. Prior to his death, Jerome had a number of interactions with bailiffs. This appeared to be as a result of employment difficulties, which contributed to on-going late debt repayments.

It would be no surprise that the stress of these experiences may have led to a worsening of his asthma and physical health.

We at The HYPE Project spoke with Niaomi Collett and Daryl Harper from Money Talks Education, “…it is challenging for young people to avoid making the same mistakes that adults make when, in many cases, there is little example of positive role modelling concerning money and sound financial management in the home. Children and young people are therefore more likely to have a negative relationship with money and get into debt, because that has been perpetuated in their environments.” Says Niaomi. 

“Our work in communities, schools, universities and even with parents, highlights a clear divide between those who have been taught how to work for money and those who have been taught how to make money work for them.

Most of us are not taught financial education in schools and as a result, we see many families caught in a viscous cycle of working just to make ends meet and the majority of families do not have an emergency fund, so borrowing is often their only option”

- Daryl Harper

As children begin to form their attitudes and habits towards money from as early as 7 years old, materialism and a false sense of wealth have become commonplace among our youth. 

Niaomi goes on to tell us “Our children and young people are growing up in a society where instant gratification is lauded and the concept of investing (not just financially speaking) for the long term is alien to them. Our workshops support young people and their families to address some of the inherited subconscious views we all hold about money and to understand the importance of saving, budgeting and long financial goal setting. I inherited a significant amount of money when my dad sadly passed away, but like most people who do not come from money, or have an understanding of what to do with large sums, it burnt a hole in my pocket and I did not have much to show for it,”

“Having learnt the hard way, I felt a responsibility to share the knowledge and financial education I’ve since acquired and when I met Daryl, who had been teaching financial education to families for more than 10 years, we formed Money Talks Education out of our desire to make an impact to the financial lives of as many young people and families as possible."

So, how common are mental health difficulties for those experiencing financial debt?

What was even more astounding was the discovery that psychological autopsy studies have shown that being in debt placed individuals at almost eight times the risk of completed suicide (Richardson et al., 2013).

However, unlike other socioeconomic factors such as unemployment, income and financial strain, relatively few studies examined debt as a specific aspect of socioeconomic disadvantage contributing to poor mental health outcomes.

One example is a study by Clarke et al. (2016) who reported that people with depression who are also in financial difficulty are approximately four times more likely to still have depression and financial difficulty when contacted 18 months later than people without financial difficulty.