Money and Recovery
When you are on your recovery journey, it can be hard to deal with every part of your daily life, particularly when you want to focus on managing your physical and/or mental health. One aspect that can be ignored is your finances and this can have a serious impact on your health and recovery journey. As Martin Lewis - the Money Saving Expert- points out, “Mental health problems can cause severe debt, and severe debt can cause mental health problems.”
Taking the time to look at your finances when you are having a relatively good day can give you a plan in place and a support network for days when you are finding it much more difficult to cope. Having the energy to deal with your problems can seem like enough reason to avoid dealing with them at all. However, with the help of a family member, friend or support worker you can put a plan in place. There are also debt counselling agencies such as Step Change who can help you with sorting out your money, drawing up a budget and prioritising your debts.
“No debt problems are unsolvable. No matter how bad it seems, while it may not always be easy or quick, there is light at the end of the tunnel.” – Martin Lewis
On the moneysavingexpert.com website there is a guide which we think is very useful – Mental Health & Debt 2018. It is free to download. This guide is very comprehensive and covers how to look at the problem, getting free help, working with banks and how to get help and support. Money problems can bring up a lot of difficult emotions, but the guide has been colour coded so that the sadder stories are highlighted in red, and the success stories in green. If you are feeling low and not in the mood to read about someone else's problems, you can simply skip the red ones.
Confronting your problems, even those not directly linked to your health, is a very important part of your recovery journey. At the Nottingham Recovery College we want to support and inform you about how you can approach these issues in a supported and methodical way. We have a course called ‘My Voice, My Choice,’ which is a course in self-advocacy and knowing your rights. If you would like to find out more or enrol please refer to our prospectus.
