Queen Creek, Arizona Short Sale

From the Sciencedaily.com website, August 2009: The nation’s home foreclosure epidemic may be taking its toll on Americans’ health as well as their wallets. Nearly half of people studied while undergoing foreclosure reported depressive symptoms, and 37 percent met screening criteria for major depression, according to new University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine research …. Many also reported an inability to afford prescription drugs, and skipping meals. The authors say their findings should serve as a call for policy makers to tie health interventions into their response to the nation’s ongoing housing crisis.

This study follows the pattern of typical studies ginned up to encourage more government intervention into people’s lives. The pattern is usually as follows: find a problem that most people recognize as a problem, find some casualties, suggest that some kind of new program will reduce the casualties, advocate the creation and funding of the new program. Stir and repeat.

As everyone knows, going through hard times, such as foreclosure or the loss of a job or spouse, cause some people to feel bad. In this case, the bad feelings are identified as depression–sometimes minor, sometimes major. But note the ginning up of the statistics. This study reports that less than half the study participants reported ‘depressive symptoms.’ What are depressive symptoms? For the purpose of studies such as this a depressive symptom could be something as simple as checking off a box on a questionnaire that asks if you feel bad. Truly, simple as that. If you feel bad after receiving a foreclosure notice you demonstrate a depressive symptom.

Actually, come to think of it, who doesn’t show a depressive symptom after receiving a foreclosure notice? It is an odd person indeed who doesn’t show at least some signs of depression after receiving a foreclosure notice. Which raises another question: How in the world did less than half the participants in this study NOT show depressive symptoms after receiving a foreclosure notice. Is this study trying to imply that most people are so dense that even a threat to their homes doesn’t get them to notice and react?

The next step, after getting a warning foreclosure notice and reacting by feeling bad (or not reacting, which most people in this study seem to do) is action. This study found that people who show depressive symptoms tend not to be able to afford prescription drugs and tend to skip meals. We’ll leave the meals aside for a moment, since we have no baseline data. Are people who receive foreclosure notices over- or underweight? Is the loss of a meal good or bad for their health? Is there a correlation between obesity and foreclosure? We don’t know and won’t speculate here. Let’s just say that skipping a meal or two or three is not a serious issue for most Americans. Until proven otherwise, the inclusion of the loss of meals in this study seems trivial and/or unnecessary.

Prescription drugs. Is it any wonder that people in an economic crisis such as foreclosure tend not afford or choose not to afford prescription drugs? If they can’t afford the roof over their heads is it likely they’ll have spare change to afford prescription drugs? Two things can be said about the affordability of prescription drugs.

One, many, if not most, prescription drug manufacturers have programs to make their drugs available at low or no cost for people in economic tough straits. All a person in economic trouble need do is apply to the manufacturer’s program. Manufacturers are very willing to ride in on a white horse and help people in trouble. In fact, it makes a lot of sense to apply to these programs because they very often make the drugs available for free. That kind of makes it better for people to be poor than to be average economically. The poor often get for free from manufacturers something that can cost the average person quite a bit.

Two, more and more studies have been published recently which indicate that most prescription medications for depression don’t work. They do not do much better than placebos (sugar pills). There has been quite a bit of debate recently about the effectiveness of prescription depression medication, so not exposing more people to them might be a very good thing. Over-the-counter medication, alternative medications (such as herbal and ayurvedic) may work just as well as those expensive prescription drugs. This question is up in the air at this period of time. So encouraging something that might do more harm than help (at the very least, might do more economic harm to the buyer in foreclosure tough times) is questionable medicine.

Of course, the linked article suggests new, expansive, expensive government-funded programs to ’solve’ this problem–the problem of cheering up the fewer than fifty percent of the population going through foreclosure who feel bad. There is zero evidence that programs such as the kind of thing recommended in the linked article work. There is zero evidence that people want this kind of government-sponsored intervention in their lives, especially during weak moments. There is no evidence how much such programs cost and how much they will add to the tax burden, thus causing even more people to be unable to afford housing because their money is being siphoned off for these unproven but sure to be elaborate and expensive programs.

Suggestion: be wary of advocates of expensive new programs that attempt to treat problems that people have dealt with for centuries in the past bt their own means. Some people want to take away your liberty to line their pockets in the guise of ‘doing good.’

Noo Yawka has many blogs on many topics. This article fits the theme of his blog http://www.joblossrepair.info

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