Rhode Island’s high unemployment rate is putting more people here on edge, and not just financially.

Anxiety, depression and a myriad of related symptoms are emerging with greater frequency and intensity in people with no history of mental illness, say health professionals around Rhode Island.

The anecdotal evidence, though far from conclusive, is supported by academic research that for years has linked increases in unemployment and job insecurity with higher rates of anxiety, depression and suicide.

Now, as the nation enters this holiday season amid the worst recession in 30 years, health-care providers around Rhode Island say that financial worries are adding another trigger to the usual uptick this time of year.

“We always see depression this time of year … but I’m seeing a larger number of people in that vulnerable spot,” said Diane Minasian, a family physician at the East Bay Community Action Program, a nonprofit organization that serves a large population of low-income residents. “Whenever we ask people … they’re identifying financial triggers.”

Deborah M. O’Brien, chief program officer at The Providence Center, said that people are coming through the emergency services department who had never before sought the mental-health group’s help. “It’s not your client that’s psychotic,” O’Brien said. “It’s people who are having these life problems…”

For instance, a man showed up recently at emergency services because he was having anxiety attacks. It turned out that the reason he was so anxious was because he and his family were homeless.

“It’s startling the people whose level of functioning has been intact until they’ve been hit by job loss, foreclosure in their homes,” said Stacey Aruda, a licensed clinical social worker who supervises the emergency services for Gateway Healthcare, a nonprofit mental health agency serving Rhode Island. “I wish we were tracking it, to be honest with you.”

Nationally, community mental-health agencies are reporting a spike in demand for out-patient services, said Linda Rosenberg, the chief executive officer of the National Council for Community Behavioral Health Care in Washington.

“We’re hearing about marital strife, kids not doing well in school,” Rosenberg said. Parents bring their children in for mental-health services, she said, and the clinician finds out that the parents lost their jobs or had their hours cut. “It’s really affecting the whole family.”

Harvey Brenner, a professor of public health at the University of North Texas and emeritus professor at Johns Hopkins University, has conducted extensive research that seeks to answer the question: Do changes in employment correspond with changes in mental health?

“The answer,” Brenner said, “is profoundly yes.”

Brenner was quoted in a Newsweek article last August saying that a one percentage point increase in unemployment nationally from a year ago could be responsible for as many as 47,000 more deaths — including 1,200 more suicides and nearly 26,000 more heart attacks — than would otherwise have occurred. And if the unemployment rate continued to rise, he said, so would those numbers.

“It’s pretty clear that bad economic times lead to bad mental health,” said Sarah Burgard, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Michigan, who is familiar with Brenner’s work and has conducted her own research into the relationship between employment and health. Studies of the economies of Japan, Sweden and the United Kingdom, Burgard said, have shown that when the unemployment rate rises, so do suicide rates. And some research has also linked increases in the unemployment rate to depression and psychiatric visits.

Burgard has expanded the inquiry in her own research to include not only people who have lost their jobs, but those who fear losing them. She and her colleagues conducted a nationwide study of 3,600 adults from 1986 to 2002 in which they concluded that chronic job insecurity is even more strongly tied to poor health and depression than an actual job loss or a life-threatening illness. (The study was funded by the National Institute on Aging and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.)

“You’re living with an ocean of threat,” said John Brett, a clinical psychologist and director of the nonprofit health care and social-services agency SSTAR of Rhode Island. Money and relationships, he said, are the biggest “psycho-social stressors.” And when stressed, alcohol and substance abuse also tend to rise.

The increased demand for services, particularly among jobless residents who have lost their health insurance, comes amid state budget cuts that have shrunk funding for mental-health providers.

“What scares me is, how much worse might it get?” said Bob Crossley, chief executive of The East Bay Center, one of seven community mental-health centers in Rhode Island. His agency has seen a 10 percent to 15 percent increase in its uninsured population just during the last six months. “What will we do to respond to that?”

Of course, it’s not all depressing. Studies also show that during recessions some aspects of health actually improve. The rate of heart disease is one example — it tends to decline in a down economy, said the University of Michigan’s Burgard.

One reason posited: people eat less fast food. To reduce stress

•Keep a balanced lifestyle, which includes healthy eating, sleeping, exercising and maintaining structure in your daily activities.

•See friends and other people who you enjoy and who understand you; isolation doesn’t help.

•Plan ahead but try not to worry about the future; focus on what you can do now to make life better.

•Reach out to other people in need; it’s satisfying and puts your own problems in perspective.

•Find one thing every day — no matter how small — for which you are grateful.

Source: Jon Brett, a clinical psychologist and director at SSTAR-R.I., nonprofit health care and social service agency.

larditi@projo.com