How stressful is foreclosure? A new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) finds that when a community’s foreclosure rate goes up so do its rates of high blood pressure, suicide attempts and ER and doctor’s office visits.
As TIME Moneyland’s Brad Tuttle reported:
[F]or every increase of 100 foreclosures in a zip code, there’s a corresponding rise in health issues for people in the normally healthy age group of 20 to 49: an 8.1% increase in diabetes, 7.2% more ER visits and hospitalizations for hypertension, and 12% more visits to doctors related to anxiety. A rise in foreclosures was also associated with a 39% increase in trips to the hospital related to suicide attempts.
Of course, exact cause and effect are impossible to pin down; the spike in health problems could be caused by any number of things — not just the stress of foreclosure. But the association is kind of interesting. Read more about it on TIME’s Moneyland blog.
