It's only natural that financial hardship and loss of income will create worry. When that worry escalates to obsession, it can become a true anxiety disorder.
Money anxiety involves intense worry, fear, and stress about finances, whether personal, business, or both. Money anxiety happens not only to people experiencing poverty, but also working and business professionals. While there are serious mental and physical health implications, effective treatment is available.
What causes financial anxiety? According to Blackwell, there are many triggers that can cause financial anxiety. Some common ones include a potential job loss, a money misstep, a lack of personal finance education or your childhood beliefs about money.
A number of studies have demonstrated a cyclical link between financial worries and mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, and substance abuse. Financial problems adversely impact your mental health. The stress of debt or other financial issues leaves you feeling depressed or anxious.
Money problems can affect your mental health
Certain situations might trigger feelings of anxiety and panic, like opening envelopes or attending a benefits assessment. Worrying about money can lead to sleep problems. You might not be able to afford the things you need to stay well.
Financial anxiety is an obsessive fear of things related to money that can often be debilitating. Financial anxiety can be triggered by any number of things, not just a lack of money.
Some signs that financial stress is affecting your health and relationships include arguing with the people closest to you about money, difficulty sleeping, feeling angry or fearful, mood swings, tiredness, muscle pain, loss of appetite, lower sex drive and withdrawing from others.
Chrometophobia, like other phobias, can also bring with it intense feelings of hopelessness, anxiety, and depression. If you're feeling intense anxiety caused by your financial situation, you should contact a mental health professional right away.
People who have faced severe financial difficulties in the past may develop chrometophobia, because they may have been traumatized by the situation and fear it may occur again, explains Dr. Daramus.
found that individuals with lower levels of household income faced an increased risk of depression compared to those with higher levels of household income [34].
Women are more likely to experience financial stress than men — 46 percent of women said money has a negative effect on their mental health, compared to 38 percent of men. Of those who said money is a stressor, 28 percent said they worry about it daily.
Anyone can experience financial stress, but financial stress may occur more often in households with low incomes. 2 Stress can result from not making enough money to meet your needs such as paying rent, paying the bills, and buying groceries. People with less income might experience additional stress due to their jobs.
Signs and symptoms that can show and lead to money disorders are engaging in addictive gambling, Financial infidelity, compulsive expenditure and prince charming syndrome. People with money disorders often don't realize that they are in that state or that they need help.
Many people are financially insecure because they don't understand certain aspects of their finances. For instance, some are afraid to invest, so they just avoid it altogether. Rather than letting your financial insecurity prevent you from succeeding, get educated about all things money!
Like other phobias, chrometophobia is an irrational fear of spending money.
People who have money dysmorphia live with the mentality of a broke person. They feel poor even though they are not. They think they can't afford anything, even when it's budgeted for. They might purchase an item or book a trip they've saved for, and their first thought is, “You can't afford this!”
Too little money causes deflation. Deflation is a state of the economy where prices of goods in a country are continually declining. One of the leading causes of deflation is too little money in circulation in an economy.
Dr. Overton: Money disorders are persistent patterns of self-destructive financial behavior. They develop out of distorted beliefs about money, or as a result of psychological issues like anxiety, depression or trauma. They're often caused by painful or distressing life events that are related to money.
A depression is a severe and prolonged downturn in economic activity. A depression may be defined as an extreme recession that lasts three or more years or which leads to a decline in real gross domestic product (GDP) of at least 10% in a given year. Depressions are far less common than milder recessions.
They found: Money reduces intense stress: There was no significant difference in how often the participants experienced distressing events—no matter their income, they recorded a similar number of daily frustrations. But those with higher incomes experienced less negative intensity from those events.
No one is completely rational about money. We may feel a range of emotions; guilt, envy, shame, fear. We may also experience over-excitement or impulsiveness. We all have a very complex relationship with it.
Problems with money can lead to increased mental health problems, specifically depression and anxiety. Those living with debt are more likely to be depressed, anxious, or consider suicide (data cited above) Problems with money and debt lead to increased stress.