Highlights:
- Debt can occur for any number of reasons, many of which are beyond a person’s control.
- Your finances are closely connected to your overall well-being, so debt and other money issues can be a major strain on your mental health.
- Ignoring your debt won’t make it go away and could even make the problem worse, especially if it leads to late payments or continued overspending.
If you’re one of the millions of Canadians living with debt or other money issues, your financial situation could be negatively impacting your mental health.
Debt can leave you feeling stressed out, anxious and depressed. However, understanding the link between debt and mental health is an important step toward a happier, debt-free future.
Potential impacts of money and debt stress
There’s a strong link between debt and poor mental health. People with debt are more likely to face common mental health issues, such as prolonged stress, depression, and anxiety.
Debt can affect your physical well-being, too. This is especially true if the stigma of debt is keeping you from asking for help. Increased stress could decrease the quality of your sleep, which can in turn negatively affect your physical health and impair your ability to concentrate throughout the day.
On the flip side, these negative effects can make your financial situation even harder to handle. Individuals struggling with mental health issues are more likely to have trouble managing their finances. For example, they may find themselves overspending to feel the temporary excitement of a new purchase. Or, they may make unwise financial choices such as withdrawing money from their retirement accounts to cover nonessential costs.
All of this together creates a cycle that’s hard to break: A poor financial situation may lead to mental health struggles. Then, once you’re struggling with your mental health, it could become even more difficult to manage your money, so your debt only continues to grow.
How?
The only way to succeed in financial self-healing is through personal commitment and self-discipline, day in, and day out, on everything money. Have confidence that you can overcome the challenge. It’s only money.