Sensex loss a gain for shrinks

With the Sensex registering its fourth straight loss on Thursday, some of the city's clinical psychologists are seeing an increase in cases of market-induced anxiety cases.

While symptoms on the rise include general anxiety, depression and fear of loss of economic well-being dominate the problems of investors, professional investors who live through trading are facing graver challenges like suicidal tendency, listlessness and the loss of appetite for work.

"In just the last one and a half month, I have had seven really serious cases of extreme anxiety verging on suicidal feelings referred to me," says Dr Harish Shetty, one of the five top psychiatrists in the city who runs two clinics in the Mumbai suburbs of Andheri and Vile Parle.

"And when seven cases have come to me, I am ruling out another 70 who have failed to make it beyond the family physician and the guru. And mind you, seven cases of suicidal tendency is very extra-ordinary for me," he adds.

Though without official data, in a country where the need for psychological counselling is equated with lunacy, reports from small private clinics are pointing to an increase in the number of financial stress related problems being reported by patients.

"No one really comes to me and says I am anxious because of the stock market. The symptoms are the usual ones that one can find in people facing finance difficulties," says Dr Nirmala Rao, who has been running a private counselling centre in the city's Dadar locality for the last 20 years.

Rao says that of late, anywhere between 2 to 5 cases out of the nearly 10 fresh cases taken on by her clinic every week have their root causes in finance-related anxiety.

"Most of my clients are normal people who have a part of their savings invested in stocks and as such do not face complete rout if the markets crash, but the stress produced by the movements are enough to re-create eased-out symptoms that they had been suffering from earlier," Rao points out.

A little bit of sharing usually does the trick, she says. "We are not stock market experts, so the choice of whether to get rid of most of their stocks ultimately has to come from within them," she says.

Shetty, whose clients mostly consist of up-market stock traders, has a more complicated task on hand. "The most important difference I have seen is a complete loss of self-confidence," he says.

"People who have lost 25 lakhs or 30 lakhs simply don't have the energy to go back to their trading table. They feel lost, as if they have been hit by an unseen enemy, especially so as the reason for the volatility is beyond most people's understanding. And since many of them are 40-plus in age, it is difficult for them to adjust to a new paradigm where the success or failure of their business is determined by global events over which they have no control over," he says.