 So, another concern that we know a lot of people are having that affects their mental health and wellbeing is around the rising costs of living, particularly housing. There was a report that came out last year in Australia actually where they found that 59% of people attribute their mental health challenges to the increasing cost of living. So that's huge. 60% of people basically saying that it's because everything costs more that I'm struggling with my mental health. 45% say it's housing specifically. So what? Like the cost of housing has increased. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So what advice can we give someone facing mental health challenges that are related to finances to the cost of living, not being able to make ends meet and having more, do they say, having more week at the end of your paycheck than paycheck at the end of your week? There's no one single answer because what causing people distress around finances, I'm going to call it distress, not just mental health issues. The first thing to experience is distress. That's right. Not mental health issues. So is it not having enough money to make ends meet at the end of the month or that could be for a family, for as a family, that could be an issue. Like we have seen in most places in the world, the attendance to soup kitchens has increased exponentially all around the world. So obviously people are not having enough to eat sometimes and they're relying on soup kitchens to do that. And that's concerning. Of course, your mental health doesn't have to go simply because you don't have enough to eat or to pay the bills. That does not. It doesn't go one interesting distinction because it's a correlation, but it's not a causation. So some people can be poor and quite happy, there's nothing wrong with their mental health. But we can't say that that is the ideal result from having enough. We do know that some people with men, their status and how they feel about themselves is very much connected to their ability to provide for the family. So if they can't provide, we know that naturally, biologically, they're going to be suffering. It's more likely that they suffer than not. Obviously if you have a father in the family that has got a large family or a family to provide for, his distress is going to be greater than if it's a single young man that only has to provide for himself. Providing for one person, it's a lot easier than providing for three or four or five. So it all depends also on what's available in the community to help these people, but it can be a punch in the guts for a family to say, oh my God, we have, we're now at this stage where we have to depend on the charity of others. Yeah. And then you mentioned having the resources out there to assist people because I know a lot of the companies and organizations that I work with are charitable, not for profits, and they're really struggling even just with keeping staff. And the staff that they have are under pressure to provide more services, more support. And so then they burn out and they can't keep going. And then there's less services for the community. And it becomes this cycle that's just not working. Yeah, that's true. I mean, it's very easy to say, like a story from the Great Depression that I heard and I can't remember exactly who told me the story. But he said that during this obviously many years ago, I heard this story that during the Great Depression in Australia, there were men coming around and they were hungry. And so his father would ask them to move lots of logs from one place to the other. And he says that those logs got moved so much during the Great Depression. Backwards and forwards from one place to the other. Yeah, because he didn't want to feed them with and then felt that they had they had received charity. Right. So everybody that ate, they ate plentiful at the end of the day. But they felt that they had earned the meal. And that was very smart of them, you know. Every man that ate in that house felt proud of themselves. They felt good about themselves. So charity is good. But also helping people feel good about themselves is also important. And we have to be clever as to how that charity is given. Well, I like the idea that pay it forward kind of thing. So if I take here, but I can give over there, that can also help people feel a sense of self pride, really. We all need help. Everyone needs help in one way or another at some point in time. You know, so the biggest thing we need is to feel valuable. Yeah. Contribution. Contribution. Yeah. So are there ways in which we can help other people in which they feel valuable? Yeah. I mean, we're looking at different parts of that Maslow's hierarchy of needs. For those of you who are familiar with it, you know, according to Maslow, you need those basic survival, food, water, shelter, you know, and before you go up to the next level, before you go up to the next level. But it was I mean, at the time it was considered that it was progressive. But I think there's a mix. I really think that we we do need that sense of belonging, even if we don't have the basics sometimes. And so that can be protective as well. Yeah. So we can make changes, feel values. But let's not forget about making our family members feel valuable, too. If your husband has lost the job, how can you make him feel valuable? Because he will be feeling pretty shit at the moment. OK, so we've been talking. I've got to say it as the female here when you're talking about men as a provider, et cetera, et cetera. But the reality is there are a lot of single parent families. There are a lot of that burden is on a lot of females as well to provide or the burden, but also the desire as well. So if you're in a single family, it's going to be a little bit more difficult for you to expect others to make you feel valuable, because it wouldn't be fair for a single mother or a single dad to expect your children. No, of course, yeah. To make you feel valuable. You're the parent. You're the parent at the end of the day. So but it is your job to make your kids feel valuable. Yeah, I mean, that's where you can give it. But do you have you have friends and family around you that can speak to you positively? They can speak to you and they can they can somehow meet your love language? Do you think the stress of finances impacts men and women differently? You've talked about men and the importance of providing. Do women not have is it? I feel like there's a qualitative difference to the way we experience that stress. What do you see that? Well, what we know from the way there I mean, there are differences first and foremost. We know biologically there are differences between men and women, even the way the brain is structured is different. And all the studies consistently show women have a greater tendency to ruminate, for example, to go over and over and over things, which can lead to more stress, more anxiety, more depression. Interestingly, a lot of the statistics show that there are sort of higher rates of anxiety and depression amongst men amongst women, sorry, rather than men. And yet we know that men struggle too. So there's a lot, you know, is that just because of the way the questions are asked? Is that because women are more likely to talk about it? And yet I think there's there's a different level of. Yeah, I don't think how regardless of how far we have come in the last 30, you know, well, 50 years of feminism, I think it's biological for a man still to feel that they have the main the main responsibility to provide for the family. It's like something ingrained, evolutionary ingrained. So when they lose their job, it's a big, it's not just a big rejection, it can be a big punch to the psychology as to how much they're worth as a man, as a man in society and for their family. Whereas, you know, it is different. I don't think women still have got that put up on them, on them as a society in which they're seen as the providers for the family. So some women may mean, you can't say, oh, women are fine if we lose, I don't know. No, no, no, I didn't say that. I didn't say that. I'm saying that that aspect of being the provider is not there is still a societal expectation. Yeah, there is still an aspect of rejection for women and status because I've seen more and more years. I've seen more women become more concerned about their careers. Yeah. And if their career is failing, they're not going to be happy. Of course not. They're not going to be happy. So when you ask, is it impact differently? Yes, it impacts differently, but it still impacts. Of course. We're not saying that it doesn't impact. It impacts differently, but it still impacts. So that's what we're trying to deal with. Now, you raised an interesting point. What if they're single parent families? And what if they're single parent families and trying to make it mean there's a lot of homeless single parent families at the moment, unfortunately. Well, then again, we come back to forming community relationships, support, support networks. I mean, what's they're saying? It takes a village to raise a child. Yeah. But if you're homeless, are you part of a community? That's a good question. Yeah. Or do you feel disenfranchised? If you're in a car, moving around, for example. And I can imagine some people would prefer not to be part of, you know, the community. Maybe to embarrass. Exactly. Yeah. So difficult questions, especially speaking of people losing jobs. There's been lots of reports lately layoffs in the tech industry, not one that you typically think of as being in the space of poverty. Nevertheless, to go from having a good solid income to to not having that security anymore. That seems to be continuing. So some industries are laying off people. Other industries are desperate to get people. There's a lot happening in the IR space at the moment. And we talk about the housing crisis and the job crisis, but the the rise of living cost. You know, the reality that it seems like the governments have dropped the ball in building houses and providing houses for, you know, for for the more desperate. Yes. So we don't have as much available in that. So we're not saying here that it's all up to you. So much we can do as individuals sometimes. We can take care of our mental health so we don't go down the rabbit hole too far. Yeah. You know, but some things are systemic and we need better systems. We need better provisions for those of us that through no fault of our own, sometimes we find ourselves in a situation that is dire. And as a community, we need to come together and say, OK, what are we providing? Get get resourceful, really think about things in a different way. How can we approach this differently? Because the world is changing. So absolutely, we need to be adaptable and flexible and, you know, being that again, big parts of resilience is that ability to to be resourceful and flexible with whatever we're presented with. So we can keep ourselves as well as possible through change. Yeah. I remember also that it's nice to have nice things. But things don't miss you if you're gone. They don't have a feeling for you, even if you have a feeling for them. But relationships is where it's at. If you have strong relationships, if you're known as a person that is kind, that is loving, that is stable, stable, you know, and true to your word, you can develop nice, strong friendships. And, you know, sometimes the best thing that you can have around you in this in a crisis is a good network, a good network. Hi, I'm Amy Golding, director of psychology for the Workplace Mental Health Institute. We hope you liked the video. If you did, make sure to give it a thumbs up. We have more and more videos being released each week. So when you subscribe, you'll get a notification, letting you know when a new one's just been published. So make sure to hit that subscribe button and don't miss out on this vital information for yourself, your colleagues and your loved ones.