The Hidden Toll: When Poverty Undermines Mental Health
These challenges create more than financial strain, they take a serious toll on emotional well-being.
For thousands of Berkshire County residents, programs like the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) and the Community Services Block Grant (CSBG) provide a fragile line of defense against these pressures. Their proposed elimination in the federal budget would remove critical supports, not just from household budgets, but from the emotional stability of families, seniors, and individuals already stretched to the edge.
Mental health is not shaped in a vacuum. It is built, or broken, by our environment. When basic needs go unmet, emotional health unravels. That unraveling is one of the most damaging and least visible consequences of poverty.
BCAC serves thousands of Berkshire County residents each year. While we do not provide clinical mental health services, we see every day how anxiety, depression, and despair creep in when people are overwhelmed by economic insecurity. When a parent cannot afford to heat their home or buy their child a pair of winter boots, it does not just create physical discomfort, it creates guilt, shame, and a sense of failure.
We hear it in the voices of those who call us: the senior quietly admitting they have been living in a cold home, the single mother crying in frustration over a shutoff notice, the middle-aged man, recently laid off, unable to afford groceries and too embarrassed to ask for help. These are not isolated cases. These are daily realities.
When CSBG and LIHEAP are in place, we can offer more than a temporary fix, we can offer hope. A warm home in January. A coat that fits. A volunteer who helps someone file their taxes and walks them through the refund they did not know they qualified for. These small things restore dignity and peace of mind. They help buffer the emotional cost of poverty.
The CDC's Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) research has shown that chronic stress during childhood, such as housing instability, hunger, or a lack of basic resources, can lead to long-term mental and physical health issues, including depression, anxiety, substance use, and heart disease. When children grow up in homes constantly in crisis, the effects follow them into adulthood. Eliminating programs that prevent or interrupt that cycle puts an entire generation at risk.
Now imagine that safety net disappearing.
Without LIHEAP, more than 8,000 Berkshire households could lose help with winter heating. Imagine the stress of facing subzero temperatures with no heat and no options. For older adults, that stress is not only dangerous, it is deeply isolating. Prolonged cold and social isolation are linked to depression, cognitive decline, and worsened health.
Without CSBG, there will be no funding to respond to the everyday emergencies that quietly destabilize lives, like a missed rent payment or the lack of transportation to get to work. Programs that provide warm clothing to approximately 2,300 children would disappear. Our ability to offer low-income lending programs that help people purchase a car to get to a job, or basic furniture when moving from a shelter into permanent housing, would be lost. The VITA program, which helps low-income families access the tax credits they have earned, would be left unfunded.
These are not luxuries. They are the front line of crisis prevention.
As these supports vanish, the psychological effects ripple outward: rising anxiety in households already on edge, depression among those falling behind, and more children experiencing chronic stress in unstable homes. This is how the emotional cost of poverty shows up, quietly, cumulatively, and powerfully.
This is how mental health degrades in a community. Not all at once, but one lost resource at a time.
And what happens when emotional distress deepens and there is nowhere to turn? For too many, it ends in the emergency room, or in harmful coping strategies. For others, it festers silently, doing long-term harm to children, parents, and elders alike.
We cannot afford to ignore the emotional cost of poverty. Experts agree that social determinants, such as safe housing, adequate heat, food security, and economic stability, are directly tied to emotional well-being. If these are taken away, no amount of therapy can fill the void.
Here in the Berkshires, CSBG brings in over $400,000 annually. It is not a large sum in government terms, but its impact is profound. It allows us to act swiftly when someone is in crisis, to prevent their stress from becoming trauma, and to protect our neighbors from slipping through the cracks.
I urge our community to speak out before this safety net is torn away. Call or write your federal representatives, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator Ed Markey, and Congressman Richard Neal.
Tell them what these programs mean to you, your family, or someone you care about. Remind them that behind every statistic is a person carrying more than just financial burdens, they are carrying emotional ones, too.
Because mental health matters, and with the right supports in place, our children and families can live with dignity, find stability, and build stronger, healthier futures for generations to come.
Deborah Leonczyk is executive director Berkshire Community Action Council.
Tags: BCAC, LIHEAP, mental health,
