Article published November 09, 2008
Worried sick: Economic downturn takes an emotional toll on families
By ANN WEBER
BLADE STAFF WRITER
Mike Veh has a steady paycheck now, but he hasn’t forgotten what life was like when the small nonprofit organization where he worked went under in 2002, sucking his job and half the family income down with it.
“I was out of work for close to two years. Thank God I had a working wife, because otherwise we wouldn’t have made it,” said Mr. Veh, who is now workforce development manager for Lucas County.
“You reach a comfortable lifestyle ... and suddenly you’re scrambling. It puts real pressure on you,” he said. “When I was laid off my son was 5 or 6. Try to explain to a 6-year-old why you can’t buy the video system he wants. They don’t understand.”
A lot of adults understand it all too well: The most recent unemployment figures for counties in northwest Ohio ranged from 6 percent to 10.5 percent.
The impact of joblessness, rising prices, shrinking paychecks, foreclosure, and bankruptcy isn’t just financial. It’s personal: People cry more easily. They wake up and can’t get back to sleep. They’re short with their kids and spouse and pets. They have to say no to what used to be affordable little pleasures. Some drink too much or watch too much TV.
How am I going to make the house payment? Where will I go if I lose the house? Which bills do I have to pay today? Which can I put off? Will I be able to feed my kids? Will I have to move away to get another job? Will my spouse leave me?
They’re literally worried sick.
“Sometimes when you eat you feel nauseated,” said a 52-year-old woman who was sitting at one of the computers recently in the resource room at the Source, Lucas County’s one-stop career center at 1301 Monroe St. — where there aren’t any slow days anymore.
Out of work since May, when the home remodeling and construction company where she worked shut down, the resident of West Toledo’s elegant Old Orchard asked for anonymity.
“I don’t want my neighbors to know. It would be embarrassing,” she said as she turned away from the computer, where she had been researching a new FHA program called Hope for Homeowners.
“I’m trying to avoid foreclosure. I’m very worried about the house,” she said.
Worry drains her.
“I find it hard sometimes to do daily chores. ...You just don’t feel like doing anything. It’s hard to motivate yourself.”
The loss of medical insurance weighs on Chris Rybka’s mind. The 29-year-old father of three and team leader at the Faurecia plant in Northwood will be laid off as a result of Chrysler LLC’s decision to eliminate a shift of workers at its Toledo North Assembly Plant.
Employees at Faurecia make door assemblies for the Jeep Liberty and Dodge Nitro — and those who lose their jobs will not receive supplemental union benefits, commonly called “sub pay” that will bring most laid-off Jeep employees’ weekly benefits to 95 percent of their base take-home pay.
“The first thing I thought was, how am I going to support my family?” Mr. Rybka said. “I’m not worried about myself, but I have little kids still and they’re always getting sick and need stuff for school.”
Joyce Vasquez, 52, of East Toledo, shares the same thoughts. She’s raising three grandchildren, ages 9 months, 9, and 13.
The machine operator and welder, who finds jobs through a company that provides industrial temps to area firms, hasn’t worked in a month.
“I’ve been stressed out. I love to work. I love to get up in the morning and go to work, and I love my grandbabies with all my heart. They need this and they need that. I don’t know how I’m going to pay my bills.”
Tears fill her eyes.
Weathering hardship
Feelings of sadness, fear, and anger are triggered when we experience a loss, said Lurley Archambeau, a psychiatrist in private practice in Maumee who also is medical director of the Mental Health and Recovery Services Board of Lucas County.
A paycheck gives us the means to meet our most basic needs — food, clothing, and shelter — as well as to acquire the extras that Americans tend to regard as necessities, he said. The loss of a paycheck affects the breadwinner and everyone in the family who depends on that income.
People who are best able to weather hardship are those who have developed ways of coping with adversity and who have people in their lives who are supportive, he went on. Those who don’t have inner resources or people to prop them up are more likely to vent their feelings “in raw and unproductive and sometimes violent ways,” Dr. Archambeau said.
Gerome Mells is fortunate in that respect. Like Mr. Rybka, he’s been told he’ll be laid off from Faurecia, where he works on the assembly line.
“There have been a couple layoffs this year,” he said. Just two weeks after being called back from one of those furloughs, he was laid off again.
“My wife, she really supported me,” said Mr. Mells, 30. “We had to make a lot of sacrifices, but we caught up on our bills and we managed to stay afloat.”
The father of two young children has started taking classes in construction and, with his wife’s help, has prepared a new resume.
Krystal Rogers, 21, also is trying to look beyond her upcoming layoff from the Faurecia assembly line. She’s thinking about going into nursing, “because it’s more promising.”
“It’s very frustrating right now because you’re worried about the future. You don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Benjamin Odom, 41, puts it this way: “It hurts your ego.”
He and his wife, Cori, left good jobs and a comfortable standard of living in Kansas City, Mo., earlier this year to be with his ailing mother in central Toledo. “We were doing well,” he said — he in an IT position for Kansas City Power and Light, and Mrs. Odom as a business manager for an auto dealership.
“It was an emotional decision to stay close to my mom. This may be a good thing morally or whatever, but it’s kind of killing us because we’re just not making it,” Mr. Odom said.
He hasn’t found work yet in Toledo. Mrs. Odom took a part-time job in a call center.
Their children — Michelle, 7, and Michael, 5 — have accepted the family’s change in fortune, which has ended their special Friday family nights.
“They’ve gone from ‘are we going this week?’ to ‘we’re not going, are we?’” Mr. Odom said.
Support systems
The approaching holiday season can add to the stress in a financially strapped household — for parents who can’t give their children everything they’d like to, and for kids who don’t understand that Mom, Dad, and Santa don’t have much money this year.
Try to set realistic expectations about gifts, advised Karen Olnhausen, director of child and adolescent behavioral health services at the Mental Health and Recovery Services Board of Lucas County. And find cheaper ways to have fun — rent a video instead of going out to the movies, for example.
Asking the children for their ideas on how to cut expenses can be surprisingly effective, said Marcia O’Connor, division manager of the nonprofit Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Northwest Ohio, which charges sliding fees — starting at zero — based on national poverty guidelines.
“I tell people to have a family meeting, and talk to the kids and ask where they can help — rather than say to them, ‘you’ve got to cut out the cell phone,’” Mrs. O’Connor said.
She also suggested that people in financial trouble seek help before the situation is so dire that their only option is to declare bankruptcy.
Some clients find emotional relief simply by coming in for the first time, because they’re finally addressing the problem, she continued. They tell her, “I can sleep now.”
Look back on how you’ve gotten through tough times in the past, advised Dr. Archambeau. Take stock of your skills and sources of support, and fall back on them. “These are the kind of situations that make us stronger,” he observed.
Mr. Veh, the workforce development manager for Lucas County, said his two-year jobless spell taught him a lot about managing money and preparing for hard times.
And Mr. Odom said that he and his wife have been talking about going back to school. “If it forces us to improve ourselves to be more marketable, that’s what we’d get out of it.”
Hanging his hope on a good attitude is Richard Brownfield, 51, who also is expecting to lose his job on the assembly line at Faurecia.
“I try to keep the best one I can and put the best foot forward,” he said, adding that he could “mope and complain, but that’s not going to help me.”
Contact Ann Weber at: aweber@theblade.comor 419-724-6126.
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