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White collars are feeling the blue-collar woes
When Youngstown, Ohio, factory workers started losing their jobs in the 1980s, labor researcher and advocate John Russo invited local doctors to meet with a stress expert to prepare them for the onslaught of medical problems sure to come.
"None of the doctors was interested," said Russo, who is co-director with Sherry Linkon of the Center for Working-Class Studies at Youngstown State University. "Nobody wanted to acknowledge that losing your job could hurt your health, even after it was clear that it was happening. Heart disease, strokes, depression, diabetes -- it can take up to five years for these to manifest after losing a job, but we were definitely seeing it.
"We even saw an increase in teenage suicides because the kids were internalizing what was happening to their parents and blaming themselves."
As Russo and Linkon always are quick to point out, it didn't help that most of the laid-off employees who were hurting were from the working class. Their plight didn't spark a lot of studies or media coverage.