How Poverty Can Perpetuate Mental Health Issues

Mental health is in many cases more crucial to personal flourishing than physical health could ever be.  A person could be crippled but full of contentment and joy, or perhaps struggling with a disease but still intellectually and emotionally thriving.  A healthy body with a mind plagued by mental health issues, especially something like extreme depression or emotional numbness, does not necessarily allow for anywhere near the same degree of pleasure, the same level of excitement, or even the motivation to overcome problems and celebrate philosophical awareness.  In spite of the advances in psychiatry and the greater accessibility of medications and treatments, obstacles like poverty can still keep people from benefitting from them.

Not only can poverty lead to mental health issues like circumstance-based depression, but it can also stop people from having the economic ability to afford needed treatments.  Depression, anxiety, emotional numbness are just some of the conditions that poverty could trap people in because they do not have enough financial resources to seek treatment while still paying for things like housing, food, and clothing.  Mental health is more important for contentment and existential peace than the solution to any of these physical needs, so it is no small thing for anyone who does not generate an income above a certain level to be incapable of doing anything substantial to resolve a mental illness that cannot be cured on one's own or by improving life circumstances.

There is no way to know just how many people might suffer from mental health conditions they have not even fully recognized and identified.  For some living in poverty, even the thought of how treatments might be too expensive could deter them from thinking about their condition.  Other people with or without mental illnesses, especially of a more severe kind, could easily take their lack of mental health problems for granted.  Someone with both consistent economic security and no mental illness could be especially prone to take these aspects of their life for granted.  On the contrary, the frustration or pain of someone who has little economic security and yet is aware of some sort of mental illness could be devastating.

Someone living in poverty could be intelligent enough to reason out and understand a plethora of truths about their condition, and they could even figure out which therapists, psychologists, or psychiatrists seem likely to be the best to seek help from, but without enough money, they will have no way to actively receive the kind of help they might need.  Not all mental health conditions resolve themselves as time passes or even disappear once the life circumstances that brought them change; moreover, some might be rooted in changes to someone's nervous system that they will not be able to fix with willpower, patience, or a number of widely accessible therapies like spending time in nature.

Poverty is a serious problem for reasons beyond how it can hinder treatments for mental illnesses, but its ability to keep people separated from treatments and medications that they could otherwise access is one of its gravest consequences for those who face rare or overwhelming mental illnesses.  A person or society that takes mental health seriously will not be able to avoid dwelling on how poverty, mental illness, and the cost of treatments relate to each other forever.  Past a certain point, wealth is what separates those who can receive the help they need from those who cannot.  The way economic status connects with this is no trivial thing.