Is The Country in a Depression?

As unemployment climbs, inflation rises and the economy lurches toward an expected slump, economists issue dire warnings about "recessionary psychology" -- a pattern of cuts in consumer spending and investment that tends to feed the downward spiral and make any economic falloff even deeper. But there is another, more profound kind of recessionary psychology. It is measured by psychic indicators rather than economic ones. As people change their behavior in the face of layoffs, cutbacks or a sudden drop in net worth, more and more Americans find themselves clinically depressed.

This year the symptoms are most apparent in those parts of the country -- New England, the mid-Atlantic states, parts of the Midwest -- that have suffered the greatest economic decline. In the suburbs of Detroit, where sagging auto sales have fanned recession fears, psychiatric referrals from a local counseling service are up nearly 20% over the past six months. Business is also booming at the Massachusetts Psychological Association referral service, where out-of-work lawyers and former bond salesmen seek help in coping with stress, anxiety disorders and panic attacks. Drugstores in the region report brisk sales in Tagamet (for ulcers), Prozac (depression) and Halcion (insomnia).

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, people jumped out of windows, joined left-wing movements or sought escape through watching Fred Astaire movies. In the 1970s, they squabbled in gas lines and drifted into the low- level despondency that Jimmy Carter called "our national malaise." The current economic slump -- not yet officially recognized as a recession + -- threatens to be particularly divisive because of the increasing disparity between haves and have-nots. "In the 1930s, everyone was in the same boat and knew other people were suffering too," observes Val Farmer, a clinical psychologist and syndicated columnist from South Dakota. "The current problems affect people so unevenly that they don't pull together."

As always, some people drown their troubles in alcohol. Others turn to chocolate bars, ice-cream cones or platters of rich food. In the words of Columbia University psychiatrist Jack Gorman, "When things are lousy anyway, who cares about cholesterol?" Many individuals become violent and abusive, usually to those closest at hand. At the House of Ruth, a Washington shelter for battered women, deputy director Dan Byrne reports that the men who are doing the hitting are talking more and more about the economic pressures they feel.

In the inner cities, the situation can quickly turn ugly, polarizing along racial lines, as when black customers organized an angry boycott of Korean greengrocers in New York City this year. The city's commission on human rights reported a 7% increase in the incidence of so-called bias crimes this year. That trend is reflected in the rise in racial assaults recorded by Klanwatch, which monitors such crimes across the U.S. for the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery. "The national recession has created general unrest," says director Danny Welch, "especially among white males vying for jobs they didn't use to have to compete for."