Why looking after your money means looking after your mental health

While short term loans can cover emergency expenses, it is not healthy for your financial or your mental health to continuously use them to make up for your monthly bills. Financial health and mental health have a greater impact on each other than you might think. As one takes a downward turn, so does the other and the same can be said for any positive changes that might happen to either of them. That means that in order to preserve your mental health, you need to start thinking a bit more about your spending habits and find out where you might be going wrong.

Spending increases and mental health declines

In an interesting survey performed by the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute, 93% of people taking part said that their spending increases when their mental health is suffering. More exploration in to this statistic found that spending was often used as a means of comfort for people suffering from depression or anxiety and individuals that had difficulty controlling compulsions during manic episodes would often spend money frivolously during such episodes. These people during moments of mental disrepair would either spend money on food and alcohol or they would find themselves occupying their time with retail therapy – staying up late to shop online.

Because this type of spending is emotionally or psychologically driven, it’s often very difficult to kerb and while the instinct might be to focus on the bad spending habits, mental health support should be at the forefront of your plan to regain your financial health. These factors that are influencing your spending need to be addressed to ensure that your solution isn’t simply short-term.

Debt leads to poor mental health and break-down in relationships

An unsettling finding that appears in a fair few pieces of research is that people who commit suicide are eight times more likely to be in debt. Similarly, debt is also a common theme amongst individuals with addictions to smoking, alcohol and drugs.

Often the reason why debt leads to depression and anxiety is because people have it persistently playing on their minds. It’s practically impossible to go a full day without spending money, so when you find every daily activity plagued with worries over how much they are spending and how much deeper they are digging themselves into debt. This is makes it very difficult to enjoy the things in life that typically bring us happiness.

Another interesting finding that has come from psychological studies is that short term unhappiness can lead to a life-long mental health issue if it is not addressed. Being anxious and being unhappy can become something of a habit and if you let yourself stay in debt to long, the unhappiness and worry that you feel can actually change the balance of chemicals in your brain, leading to a long-term mental illness.

To prevent lasting poor mental health, seek financial help when you find yourself in debt. While you might not be able to get out of debt right away, you can at least put together a plan to get out of debt and make progress can help you feel more proactive and less nervous about spending a bit of money here and there.