Perry Francis has peeked in the windows of a foreclosed
home in his neighborhood and seen what happens when a person's
coping skills are pushed beyond their limits.
Cabinet doors are gone. Countertops ripped out. Even a
toilet pulled out and probably sold on EBay or Craigslist.
"It's a reaction to people feeling powerless," said Francis,
coordinator of counseling services in Eastern Michigan'
University's College of Education Clinical Suite. "It's
that feeling of, 'If I can't control my own destiny, I'll
show them.'"
 |
SIGN OF THE TIMES: Foreclosure or auction
signs,
such as this example, are becoming
a more
common site in Washtenaw County and around
the
state as the economy has declined.
Eastern
Michigan University's College of Education
Counseling
Clinic is offering assistance and support
to troubled homeowners.
|
When you think about help for people going through foreclosure
and financial trouble, mental healthcare may not be the
first thing that springs to mind. But, along with the hard
facts of dollars and debt, comes a huge emotional toll
— embarrassment, isolation, stress and anger.
To help people dealing with foreclosure and financial
difficulties, the College of Education's counseling clinic
offers individual counseling — free and confidential — in
the clinic at the Porter Building.
Advanced graduate students in the master's counseling
program provide the support, under the supervision of a
fully licensed professional counselor who's a faculty member
in EMU's Department of Leadership and Counseling.
Francis set up the counseling service after making a presentation
about the mental health effects of foreclosure in seminars
run by housing counselors from the Washtenaw County Treasurer's
Office and Michigan State University Extension.
Depending on the focus of the seminar, it might include
bankers and lawyers, housing specialists, real estate agents
or financial specialists. But no one was offering help
relative to stress.
"From my personal perspective, it has to be a resource," said
Artrella Cohn, one of the county's MSU Extension mortgage
foreclosure prevention specialists. "As with any resource,
whether people use it is a whole other piece. But we identified
(low-cost mental health services) as something that's important,
as people go through this process, for them to have available."
People sometimes confide that they're not sleeping much
or that the financial stress is taking a toll on their
marriage, Cohn said. She can put them in touch with people
who can help, but not everyone who deals with people in
foreclosure has a master's degree in social work.
Francis said he's met bank representatives who'd had customers
confide that they were under so much stress they'd thought
about suicide.
"Here's this poor banker who doesn't have any training
(in counseling), trying to talk them down," Francis said. "Now,
they have somebody to refer (those customers) to. Of course,
the flip side is that if you tell somebody, 'We have mental
health counseling,' they say, 'Oh, I'm fine. I don't need
that.'"
That reaction, Francis said, is a holdover from 20-30
years ago when counseling suffered from the rap of being "only
for crazy people." Today, people, particularly young people,
are more attuned to the idea that sometimes they need help
and that's when they go talk to a mental health specialist.
"That 'I'm OK' reaction is part of that stigma," Francis
said. "They say, 'I'm not mentally ill. I'm just under
a lot of stress.' They're right. They're not mentally ill,
but their coping skills are not set up to deal with this
kind of stress."
But embarrassment may keep them from getting help. And
that can lead to isolation, more stress, anxiety, depression
and poor decisions that add to their burdens.
Take that torn-out toilet, for example.
"When you talk to these (foreclosure) prevention specialists,
they explain that, if you do that, you're just getting
yourself in deeper with the bank," Francis said. "You have
some legal obligations and you have some good normal obligations
so, that when you turn the house back over to the bank,
they're not coming after you for damages."
The EMU College of Education Counseling Clinic in located
in the Clinical Suite, room 135, in the Porter Building.
Counselors are available Monday through Wednesday, from
1-8 p.m. For an appointment, call the clinic at 487-4410
between 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday through Wednesday. For more
information, check the Web site at www.emich.edu/coe/clinics.
