Times are tough all over, as they say. Desperation is setting in.
On October 3rd, Reuters reported that a 90 year-old woman in Cincinnati facing eviction shot herself in an attempted suicide.
The LA Times reports today that sometime over the weekend, between October 4th and 6th, a man in an upscale neighborhood inouter suburbs of Los Angeles killed himself and his family after losing his job as a financial manager.
Karthik Rajaram who held an MBA from UCLA, was a hard-driving businessman. He was involved in several financial ventures. Between his home sale and another lucrative investment, he should have had a pile of cash.
He also had sold his home in September 2006, earning just shy of $500,000 in the process. But apparently he must have crashed hard after losing his job as a financial manager in a London-based venture capital firm.
The article also reports that a former employer had fired him in 2004 because Rajaram was unreliable and “emotionally unstable.” So who knows, maybe some counseling and meds could have helped in this case.
But maybe this is something to think about when we discuss homeowner relief on Main Street, America. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 an army of professional counselors were sent to New York to help manage the group psychological impact of the crisis.
It's easy to recall the tragic image of the man and woman holding hands as they stepped off a ledge on the World Trade Center. It's also easy to rationalize and forget the behavior of a 90 year-old woman and an apparently manic financial manager.
But maybe we should begin to recognize that there will be a growing need for individual crisis counseling even here in Vermont. As the number of job losses and foreclosures rise in Chittenden County and elsewhere, we shouldn't be surprised to see acts of desperation closer to home.
Lenders and creditors are not counselors; in fact, they can be quite the opposite. Few people experiencing financial plight would want to share the stigma of their quite desperation with colleagues, neighbors and friends.
I would argue that it's now a good time to begin running Public Service Announcements educating people that a financial crisis is often traumatic enough to require emotional counseling. In the face of losing it all, Main Street, America needs to know that suicide isn't an option.
Respectfully submitted,
Nate Freeman