The Intolerable Life Cycle of Debt and Death

Yet debt is strangely equal opportunity. One study found that problem debt almost doubled the odds for considering suicide even controlling for age, gender, employment, and experience of traumatic events. Debt obviously drives people into the poverty that we’ve already established as a killer; that debt can inspire suicide even before the class slippage simply speaks to how thoroughly we’ve internalized the core tenet of neoliberalism: Everyone for themselves and woe (and humiliation) unto those who cannot take care of themselves.

As Mangione has captured international imagination as an avatar of the universality of our hatred of for-profit health care, so too can we see debt-related suicide as something bigger than a problem for poor people. It is a problem for everyone but the very, very wealthy. The top 1 percent can owe millions of dollars and go bankrupt all the time without incurring judgment or any personal psychic distress. Our conception of consumer debt as a moral failing, coupled with the belief that individuals are those ultimately responsible for their own well-being, literally kills people.

A study in the United Kingdom found that even controlling for preexisting mental illness and socioeconomic factors, suicidal ideation was twice as common among adults less than 55 years old who had “[d]ifficulty in making hire purchase or mail order repayments and paying off credit card debt, in addition to housing-related debt (rent and mortgage arrears).” A study in Australia found that in 12 percent of those with suicidal ideations who went on to make an attempt, “employment status was the only significant predictor.”