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. 2019 Sep;7(5):900-913.
doi: 10.1177/2167702619859337. Epub 2019 Jul 19.

The Great Recession and Mental Health in the United States

Miriam K Forbes  1 , Robert F Krueger  2
Affiliations

The Great Recession and Mental Health in the United States

Miriam K Forbes et al. Clin Psychol Sci. 2019 Sep.

Abstract

The full scope of the impact of The Great Recession on individuals' mental health has not been quantified to date. This study aimed to determine whether financial, job-related, and housing impacts experienced by individuals during the recession predicted changes in the occurrence of symptoms of depression, generalized anxiety, panic attacks, and problematic alcohol or other substance use. Longitudinal survey data (n = 2,530 to n = 3,293) were analyzed from the national Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study collected before (2003-2004) and after (2012-2013) The Great Recession. The population-level trend was towards improvements in mental health over time. However, for individuals each recession impact experienced was associated with long-lasting and transdiagnostic declines in mental health. These relationships were stronger for some sociodemographic groups, suggesting the need for additional support for people who suffer marked losses during recessions and for those without a strong safety net.

Keywords: Global Financial Crisis; The Great Recession; longitudinal research; mental health.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting Interests: The authors declare no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship or the publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Change in the prevalence of each mental health outcome from MIDUS-II (left-hand bar in each pair) to MIDUS-III (right-hand bar in each pair) for the total sample, and stratified by quartiles of total number of recession impacts experienced—(a) symptoms of depression; (b) symptoms of generalized anxiety; (c) symptoms of panic; (d) problems with alcohol use; (e) problems with other substance use. The prevalence at each wave is decomposed into persistent symptoms (i.e., respondents with symptoms at both waves) versus remitted and new onset of symptoms (i.e., respondents with symptoms at only MIDUS-II or MIDUS-III, respectively).
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