Effects of Financial Difficulties on General Health

Financial difficulties have been identified as one of the major causes of stress and eventual death in most parts of the world, especially in the economically undermined countries. No one would wish to be financially low. Everyone wishes to be rich and works towards achieving a target in life. However, when you fail to achieve your target and end up with financial difficulties, the result is a form frustration. This frustration, together with your inability to satisfy some basic needs further increases the effects of financial instability.

Once you are financially unstable, your health can be affected in different ways which may be manifested both physically, psychologically, and emotionally. For instance, financial stress can change your mood, alter your normal appetite, sleep patterns or even cause depression that may prompt inappropriate actions. If it gets to the extreme, continuous difficulties dealing with your own financial situation may lead to profound outcomes such as madness or even suicide/suicide attempts, especially if appropriate intervention is not sought early enough. Some of the specific ways in which financial difficulties can affect an individual are briefly described below:

Lack of proper nutrition may arise when you have insufficient income to buy food and maintain the right diet. Since nutrition directly affects your body functioning, the result is the occurrence of physical effects such as emaciation and malnutrition diseases.

Similarly, your body requires regular maintenance through such practices as exercise and relaxation. These practices are important in maintaining the physical status of your body as well as its mental status. When you are struggling to meet your basic needs such as food and clothing, it becomes difficult to mind the body’s need for exercise and relaxation. The result is having a body system that is prone to diseases and infection.

Also, the probability that you are going to spend all your time trying to make your financial ends meet is higher when you are financially low. This means that despite the harmful nature of any job available, you are likely to engage in it as long as you secure your daily bread. Much as it may be necessary to work hard, working for long hours in adverse conditions like the extreme sun or in the factory may drastically deteriorate your health.

Financial Pressure

It is common sense theory that human beings may want to defend themselves against the grim realities do not want to experience. Financial pressure being an unpleasant reality may evoke defense mechanisms such as denial and displacement. Therefore, it is common to find that most financially stressed individuals engage in potentially harmful acts like drug abuse, abortion, theft or suicide. While they engage in these acts with an intention of relieving financial pressure, the health effects involved may be disastrous.  

Financial pressure obviously results in increased stress, leading to straining of body and brain cells. Some of the cells die and the effect is early aging and poor physical appearance. This leads to bad health and exposes the body to potential dangers.

Apart from these effects, other health complications such as heart attack and high blood pressure may can about as a result of lack of financial freedom. These complications may bring about harmful health risk, contributing to the total number of deaths globally.

The above described health effects of a low financial status are likely to contribute to a generally poor health status. This is worse off because reversing their health conditions becomes even more difficult. For instance, high blood pressure and heart attack may mean continuous medication, special diet, regular exercise and so on. Yet it is the lack of such opportunities that caused their health complications. It therefore remains a tragedy. Such people struggle through their poor health condition, sometimes with no opportunity to get proper medication at all. Many at times, their struggle continues, leading to death.

In a nutshell, lack of financial freedom causes a lot of health effects as described above. As these effects get worse, it becomes even more difficult to deal with them. In most cases, financial instability leads to death. However, some ways of achieving financial freedom such as hard work, proper planning, and quality education can be adopted to avoid these effects.