Financial strain
The felt pressure of not having enough to meet obligations: debt that grows, bills that can’t all be paid, the choice between heating and food. It covers both the real shortfall and the worry it produces, and the two do not always match.
What drives it
Strain organises a life around the next payment. For identification it explains why irritability, poor sleep, low mood and withdrawal can appear in someone with no history of them, and why they cluster around bill dates rather than events in the relationship.
How it shows
Work
Overtime taken whenever offered, a second job, calls from unknown numbers left unanswered at the desk, borrowing from colleagues, worry when an expense claim is paid late. Concentration drops near the end of the month.
Relationships
Arguments that start about the washing up and end about money, one partner hiding letters, the other checking the account. Social plans get declined with vague excuses because the real reason is the cost.
Self
Notice your body when the phone shows an unknown number or an envelope has a red stripe, how often you do sums in your head, and whether low mood lifts on payday and returns a week later.
What tells it apart
Financial anxiety: Financial anxiety is worry about money that can persist when the numbers are fine. Strain starts from a real shortfall, and its worry tracks what is owed.
Major depression: Depression continues when the debt is cleared and spreads to things money doesn’t touch. Low mood from strain is more likely to ease when a debt is settled or income rises, though long strain can tip into depression.
Stress response and allostatic load: Allostatic load is the body’s wear from any long stress. Financial strain is one common source of it, identified by its tie to bills and debt.
A test
Ask what happens to the person’s mood and sleep in the week after a debt is paid or a payment arrives. A clear lift points more likely to strain than to a mood disorder running on its own.
Questions to carry
- When the letter or the call came, what did the person do in the next hour?
- Which payment am I counting down to, and what happens in my body when I think of it?
How strong the research is
strong. Debt and hardship are consistently linked with poorer mental health: a meta-analysis by Richardson, Elliott and Roberts (2013) found people in debt were more than three times as likely to have a mental health problem, with links to depression, drug dependence and suicide. The authors said they could not tell which comes first, and the link may run both ways.
Where it comes from
Long-standing research on economic hardship and health. Thomas Richardson, Peter Elliott and Ronald Roberts, 2013 (meta-analysis in Clinical Psychology Review)