Why Mental Health Cannot Be Separated From Money: Peace is expensive. Stability costs money. Safety is funded

 

There is an uncomfortable truth many people prefer not to say out loud: a significant number of what we label as “mental health issues” become quieter, lighter, or more manageable when bills are paid, rent is secure, and the fridge is full. This is not a dismissal of mental illness, trauma, or neurochemical conditions. It is a challenge to the dishonest separation we often make between mental health and material reality. Peace, stability, and emotional safety are not abstract concepts. They are deeply economic. And pretending otherwise is not wisdom , it is privilege.

In many conversations, mental health is framed as an internal battle, something that exists entirely in the mind, detached from external conditions. We are told to meditate, journal, pray harder, think positively, or seek therapy, all of which can be genuinely helpful. But what is often ignored is how difficult it is to “heal” when your life is structurally hostile. Anxiety does not exist in a vacuum when rent is due. Depression does not politely pause when your electricity is cut off. Emotional regulation becomes a luxury when survival consumes your entire nervous system.

Financial insecurity is not just stressful , it is psychologically destabilizing. The constant pressure of unpaid bills, unstable income, debt collectors, school fees, medical expenses, and the fear of eviction keeps the body in a permanent state of fight or flight. Cortisol stays elevated. Sleep is disrupted. Decision-making deteriorates. Hope shrinks. In such conditions, sadness, irritability, numbness, panic, and exhaustion are not signs of personal weakness. They are rational responses to prolonged uncertainty and threat.

Yet, society often individualizes this suffering. When someone breaks down under economic pressure, we diagnose them, label them, and sometimes even shame them, without interrogating the system that produced the stress in the first place. We ask, “What’s wrong with you?” instead of “What are you being forced to endure?” We medicalize pain that is, at its core, social and economic. This allows systems to escape accountability while individuals internalize blame for conditions they did not create.

It is telling that conversations about mental health are often dominated by people whose basic needs are already met. For someone whose rent is paid, food is available, healthcare is accessible, and emergencies are buffered by savings, mental health discussions naturally focus on self-actualization, purpose, relationships, and identity. These are real concerns — but they sit higher on the hierarchy of needs. When survival is unstable, the mind does not have the luxury to explore fulfillment. It is too busy staying alive.

This is why the claim that “money doesn’t buy happiness” is both shallow and misleading. Money may not guarantee joy, meaning, or love, but it absolutely reduces suffering. It buys time, rest, safety, choice, and dignity. It allows you to say no to abuse, leave toxic environments, access healthcare, take breaks, and plan for the future. These are not trivial advantages, they are foundational to mental well-being. The absence of constant financial threat creates space for healing to begin.

In many low-income communities, what gets labeled as depression is often chronic exhaustion. What gets labeled as anxiety is often hyper-vigilance born from instability. What gets labeled as lack of motivation is often burnout from working too hard for too little reward. When people are trapped in cycles of poverty, unemployment, underemployment, and debt, their emotional struggles are not mysterious disorders, they are predictable outcomes of structural neglect.

This does not mean that all mental health issues disappear with money. Trauma does not vanish overnight. Genetics do not rewrite themselves. Grief, loss, and existential pain still exist across all income levels. But to ignore the massive role of economic security in mental health is to lie by omission. It is to pretend that a person sleeping hungry and a person sleeping peacefully under a secure roof are experiencing the same psychological terrain. They are not.

There is also a moral danger in romanticizing struggle. Too often, suffering is framed as character-building, spiritually purifying, or necessary for growth. While adversity can produce resilience, unnecessary hardship is not noble, it is damaging. No one becomes wiser because they couldn’t afford medication. No one becomes stronger because they lived with constant fear of eviction. Chronic stress erodes the body and the mind. It does not refine them.

When we detach mental health from economics, we end up offering solutions that feel insulting to people in survival mode. Telling someone to “practice gratitude” when they are drowning in debt is not compassion, it is tone-deaf. Encouraging mindfulness without addressing hunger, insecurity, or unsafe housing is like prescribing breathing exercises to someone being held underwater. Relief requires removing the pressure, not just managing the reaction to it.

This is why conversations about mental health must expand beyond therapy rooms and into policy spaces. Housing, wages, healthcare, education, and social safety nets are mental health interventions. Secure employment is mental health care. Affordable healthcare is mental health care. Reliable public services are mental health care. A society that consistently produces anxiety, despair, and burnout is not mentally ill, it is structurally violent.

Acknowledging this does not diminish the importance of therapy, medication, or personal responsibility. It contextualizes them. Healing is not just an individual journey; it is a collective responsibility. People do not exist in isolation. Minds live inside bodies, and bodies live inside systems. When those systems are cruel, unstable, or extractive, mental distress is not an anomaly, it is the norm.

So yes, it may be an unpopular opinion, but it is an honest one: peace is expensive. Stability costs money. Safety is funded. And pretending that financial security has little to do with mental health is a privilege afforded to those who have never had to choose between groceries and rent, medicine and school fees, rest and survival. If we are serious about mental health, then we must be serious about economic justice, because for many people, healing does not begin in the mind. It begins when life finally stops attacking them.