Leah Sheppard was on holiday with her partner overseas when he dumped her. Even though the relationship had been very rocky, she returned to Melbourne distraught it was over.
She tried to keep her head above water, not only emotionally after “the rejection of the one I thought was the love of my life”, but also financially.
“Suddenly I had to try to make whatever pay I was making stretch to cover a house on my own,” Sheppard says, recalling the beginning of a downward mental health spiral that pushed her to the brink 10 years ago. She was dealing with the emotional upset of the breakup alongside a physical injury, which began to interfere with her job and ability to earn an income.
She had dreamed of becoming an art curator, but arts jobs were few and far between. Instead, she turned to temping and tried to develop a startup to help women through breakups.
Life began to get hard. She did her best to manage her finances, rising stress levels and despairing feelings of being alone. “Things piled on top me,” she says. “It just chips away at your purpose, and you’re feeling like why are you even here?”
She began to feel increasingly irritable, tired all the time but also unable to sleep. “The more that I would get sick and stressed and tired, the less time I was at work, less money I was making, and it all started to snowball,” she says.
Although Leah was finding it increasingly difficult to manage her finances, she was terrified at the thought of going to work. “I’d cry at the thought of having to put on a smile for people, that’s way too much energy. I didn’t want anyone to look at me. I didn’t want anyone to talk to me … It was just way too much effort to exist around people.”
Even planning meals became a struggle. Instead she resorted to buying frozen ready meals and Uber Eats. Her shame grew as her energy drained, she says.
Sheppard likens her awareness of what was happening to her mental health to the metaphor of the frog that doesn’t realise it is being boiled when the temperature slowly increases.
One morning before work, she tried to take her life. But the thought of who would feed her cats saved her.
In the aftermath she reached out to an online support service which offered non-judgmental help. “It was just like the wave of relief that I was able to talk to someone about it and that everything I was worrying about actually had a solution. I just couldn’t see it on my own.”
Sheppard considers herself “lucky”. And she has learned to pay close attention to how she is feeling. “I have no issue putting my mental health first in my life.”
Downward spiral
A new survey from the mental health support organisation Beyond Blue shows Sheppard is not alone, with nearly half of the more than 5,000 respondents saying financial pressure has caused them distress in the last year.
The survey also reveals that shame around seeking help is getting worse. Beyond Blue found 22% of people say they aren’t getting professional mental health support because they feel ashamed, up from 13% two years ago.
Beyond Blue published its first Australia’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Check in 2022, when cost-of-living pressures began to climb. It was carried out by the Australian National University’s Social Research Centre on behalf of Beyond Blue.
Georgie Harman, the CEO of Beyond Blue, says there is a “very strong” correlation between financial distress and mental distress, “and we know that stigma and shame around financial struggles is really deep-seated”.
“In Australia it’s even worse than mental health stigma – people don’t like talking about money worries.”
The 2024 survey is a nationally representative study investigating the common causes of distress. Almost half of participants (49%) who ended up seeking professional mental health support waited until they were very distressed or extremely distressed before they did so.
“That’s just heartbreaking to me,” Harman says. “Some people waited up to 10 years before seeking support. That’s a decade of driving with a handbrake on.”
The top barriers to people seeking help were waitlists, affordability of treatment and thinking their problem wasn’t serious enough to seek support, the survey found.
Just over a quarter of respondents who reported that they had experienced a mental health challenge in the past 12 months did not seek any support for their mental health.
Financial pressures were the main cause of distress, followed by housing affordability (34%). Distress over housing affordability was even higher for ages 25-34 (53%) and ages 35-44 (47%).
Personal relationships (34%) and loneliness (30%) were also significant causes of distress.
Harman says financial wellbeing and mental wellbeing “are two sides of the same coin”.
“Financial stress can take a major toll on our mental health. But … poor mental health can then make it harder to manage our finances or limit our ability to find good work and keep good work. And it’s a downward spiral often that can be difficult to break out of.”
To try to remedy that dynamic, Beyond Blue has a strong referral relationship with Financial Counselling Australia, which offers free financial counselling.
Harman urges people to not wait until their problems snowball. Early intervention reduces the risk of problems escalating into a crisis, she says.
Nicole Black, an associate professor from Monash University’s Centre for Health Economics, says “the stigma associated with financial hardship points to the need for us to normalise not only talking openly about mental health but also financial distress”.
Financial pressures can affect mental health including anxiety and depression, she says. It also makes it difficult to afford goods and services important to mental health including housing, nutritious food and mental health services.
“The availability of free or low-cost services is crucial to make sure affordability is not a barrier.”
• In Australia, support is available at Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636, Lifeline on 13 11 14 and at MensLine on 1300 789 978. In the UK, the charity Mind is available on 0300 123 3393 and Childline on 0800 1111. In the US, call or text Mental Health America at 988 or chat 988lifeline.org
