OPINION: If more debt means fewer suicides, let’s spend big
Posted on 01 Jun 2020
By Denis Moriarty AM, group managing director, Our Community
As the high tide of the coronavirus crisis recedes over the coming months (touch wood), we know it’s going to leave behind a huge steaming pile of unemployment. One of the biggest worries people have is that this will mean a big jump in mental health problems.
The government is chipping in $48 million to help people cope, but some experts – including Headspace founding director Professor Patrick McGorry and former national mental health commissioner Professor Ian Hickie – say that won’t be nearly enough.
Based on previous experience – the surge in the suicide rate during the Great Depression, for example – there are certainly grounds for concern. Modelling by Prof. Hickie's Mind and Brain Centre at Sydney University suggested the COVID-19 crisis could lead to a 25 per cent jump in the suicide rate if unemployment reached 11 per cent.
It’s not entirely clear, though, that previous experience is a reliable guide in this case.
There are two types of major depression: endogenous depression, which comes primarily from inside yourself (that is, it has a biological or cognitive cause), and exogenous depression, which comes primarily from your reactions to outside stresses. There is a lot of grey area in between, and a lot of overlap, but the type we’re interested in here is exogenous depression. Clearly, unemployment causes stress. Losing your job puts you under financial strain, you can feel devalued, your family responsibilities prey on you, everything in your life gets tougher, Old Man Trouble moves in. Suicide rates go up.
At least, that’s the way it usually is during recessions. The COVID crisis, however, is different, and the nature of it – and our response to it – might even offer us some protection from our darkest moods.
The COVID shock is really more like a war than a financial slump. The people who’ve lost their jobs weren’t so much laid off as conscripted. There’s no question of moral worth involved. The usual nauseating rhetoric of dole bludgers and “leaners” has no point of entry.
Baristas, actors, waiters, flight attendants – they are, if anything, heroes, saints who have been drafted to sacrifice their livelihoods to preserve tottering old boomers like me from choking our lungs out in overburdened ICUs. Thank you, by the way. Honestly.
In Australia, suicide rates went up during the Depression but down during World War II. If we accept that we’re really all in this together then we can feel a sense of community, a feeling of camaraderie and mutual support. We have bigger things to worry about than the household budget.
There’s still the financial shock of unemployment. Being pushed suddenly below the poverty line is undeniably psychologically taxing. But that’s a problem that society knows how to fix; indeed, we’re making not such a bad job of fixing it. It’s not brain surgery, or even experimental virology. If people don’t have enough money, we give those people some money. Doubled JobSeeker payments, new JobKeeper subsidies – they’re partial, they’re patchy, they need a lot of tuning, but they are unquestionably effective in reducing poverty.
Keeping communities and community groups vibrant in times like this takes work in the same way that keeping the economy afloat takes work – neither of these things happens automatically. Community is real. It offers a protective blanket. Joining a community group is just about the most effective health intervention there is, and conventional economic models are really bad at scoring its benefits. Memo to governments: if you want to lock in national resilience, support local initiatives (making gifts to local netball clubs tax-deductible would be a start). That’s not the main game, though.
I’m not against corrective mental health programs – quite the reverse. But if we’re looking ahead at a raft of deaths by suicide that could be avoided by simply taking on more national debt, then I look back, again, to the end of the war (and the beginning of the boomers) when debt levels were five times what they are now, and I note that those debt levels have never caused me a moment’s anxiety in my life.
If we have more poverty, certainly, we’ll have more suicides. If, conversely, we have less poverty, we’ll have fewer suicides. And Scott Morrison and every Australian politician and advocate for a decent society has a choice.
Denis Moriarty is group managing director of OurCommunity.com.au, a social enterprise helping Australia's 600,000 not-for-profits through the pandemic with free resources at: ourcommunity.com.au/saveoursector
#SaveOurSector
This article is just one of the ways the Our Community Group is working to support not-for-profits through the COVID-19 crisis, as part of our major campaign to help the not-for-profit sector to survive, re-invent and sustain.
This commentary also appeared as part of a monthly column that's published in 160 rural and regional titles across Australia, from daily newspapers such as the Bendigo Advertiser and the Illwawarra Mercury, to weekly publications such as the Goulburn Post, the Cootamundra Herald and the Jimboomba Times.
We're proud to take a stand on progressive issues, which we're able to do as a social enterprise that's not tied to the purse strings of any government or corporate organisation.
Here's a taste of some other recent commentaries as they've appeared in some of those publications, as well as our own.
May 2020: For country towns to survive, some assembly is required
April 2020: Virus shows us that social change can happen, now
March 2020: Why we need to appoint a no-bullshit council
February 2020: Aussie citizenship test - it's just not cricket
February 2020: The future is now, and it's hot, dry and undeniably real
January 2020: Why it's time to rethink our MP numbers
December 2019: It's time for less spending and more giving
November 2019: The Joy of Giving - on Tuesday
October 2019: Ignoring the data is an invitation to disaster
September 2019: What is the Catholic Church teaching us about love?
August 2019: The Uluru statement: Why it’s time for the Commonwealth to show some heart
July 2019: Why homelessness is worth this gamble
June 2019: After election, life and advocacy must go on
May 2019: Pokies reliance is a risk to RSLs
April 2019: Kids are teaching us the power of protest
March 2019: Work-life balance pulls us in three directions
Feb 2019: Australia Day honours: Why being rewarded for doing your job is un-Australian
Jan 2019: Why 2019 gives me reason for optimism
December 2018: It’s time to stop blaming pollies and start getting active
November 2018: Community connection is an antidote to loneliness
September 2018: Good culture is the key to good communities
August 2018: Drought sees groups suffering in a sunburnt country
July 2018: Thai cave rescue shows that community bonds are our best insurance