The gory side of recession!

If the news reads as thus: “Consumer spending in the U.S. fell more than forecast”……. “Mounting job losses threatened to weigh” ……… “Economists fear the worst is yet to come,” it is the ‘not so gory’ category. ‘She must be absurd,’ is surely what you are thinking about me.

Now picture this: David Kellermann, the acting chief financial officer at Freddie Mac was found hanging in the basement of his Virginia home last week. This is the ‘gory’ side of recession.

Kellermann's saga epitomizes the agonizing experiences of the elite in the present day troubled world. Dr. Shelley Reciniello, a psychologist experienced in counseling Wall Street executives puts it as thus, “Their worlds are basically crumbling. Everything that they had hoped for and really seemed within their grasp over the last 20 years or so is ending."

The hoi-polloi are no strangers to this situation. For them, making both ends meet is an everyday challenge and thus, every day is a recession for them.

But for the cream of the crop, it is not an everyday scenario. At the heart of it, says Dr Shelly "there's a disparity between who you want to be, who you thought you were and who people are telling you are today, and that hurts like hell."

Kellermann is not a one off case. Cases abound wherein financial crisis can be blamed for the suicides of several high-profile business executives in recent months. German billionaire businessman Adolf Merckle committed suicide after heavy stock market losses.

Likewise Frenchman Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet, co-founder of money manager Access International, is another case in point who lost $1.4 billion to Bernard Madoff's ponzi scheme and committed suicide.

And then we have statistics to prove that the gory side exists. According to the AAS, the average annual U.S. suicide rate is 11 deaths per 100,000 people. During the Great Depression of 1930’s, the rate of suicide peaked to more than 17 suicides per 100,000.