Mental Health & Wellness > Wellness Matters

The physical and mental fallout from financial stress: Best approach for patient struggles

By Elizabeth Pratt | Fact-checked by Barbara Bekiesz

Published April 23, 2025

Key Takeaways

Industry Buzz

“Uncertainty is inherently stressful, but much more so when it involves threats to the ‘nest egg’ that someone has worked so hard to solidify for their future.” – Gregory Nawalanic, PsyD, clinical psychologist, The University of Kansas Health System
“A high percentage of bankruptcies are medical bankruptcies, where people have incurred unexpected healthcare costs, and it can have disastrous financial consequences for them.” – David Cutler, MD, board-certified family medicine physician, Providence Saint John’s Health Center, Santa Monica, CA

Sweeping changes to tariff policies and subsequent stock market volatility are dominating recent headlines. And now, physicians are reporting that all the financial anxiety has more and more patients showing up to their office seriously stressed.

“Uncertainty is inherently stressful, but much more so when it involves threats to the ‘nest egg’ that someone has worked so hard to solidify for their future.” Gregory Nawalanic, PsyD, a clinical psychologist at The University of Kansas Health System, tells MDLinx. “I just finished a therapy session where the patient was expressing doubts about their plans to travel throughout the rest of their retirement years. These are legitimately impactful times, particularly depending on where someone is in their lifespan.”

The cost to health

Chronic stress can impact your body in many ways, says Dr. Nawalanic. “We can see it in the form of weight gain, as we are drawn to consume comfort foods and sweets [when stressed],” he says. “We can also see it in terms of cardiac function, as blood pressure and heart rate increase when we’re under immediate stress. Immune function can be suppressed, making us more vulnerable to viruses, which then might cause us to miss work and add to our stress in a vicious cycle.”

Financial stress may also prevent some people from seeking medical advice or seeing a practitioner thanks to the soaring costs of healthcare, David Cutler, MD, a board-certified family medicine physician at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, CA, tells MDLinx.

“In fact, a high percentage of bankruptcies are medical bankruptcies, where people have incurred unexpected healthcare costs, and it can have disastrous financial consequences,” says Dr. Cutler.

The importance of affordable healthcare

Dr. Cutler argues that one way physicians can help their patients is to emphasize the importance of medical insurance. “A lot of times, people decide that they're going to give up their health insurance, and there's no enforcement mechanism to make sure people do have health insurance, and the consequences of that sometimes can be quite disastrous," he says.

“When we hear talk that various political factions want to get rid of Obamacare, get rid of the assurance that they'll have access to healthcare, that can be very distressing," Dr. Cutler continues. "So we try to encourage our patients to not only access healthcare, but make sure that, politically, that mechanism remains intact for everyone.”

It may also be helpful to remind patients that preventative care can be a cost-saving measure in the long term, says Dr. Nawalanic. “It’s important to remind patients who have insurance that they don’t get their premiums back at the end of the year in the form of a bonus check for benefits left on the table unused.”

“If we aren’t taking care of ourselves, we may wind up foregoing lower-cost preventative care and inadvertently winding up with larger bills for more extensive procedures,” he says. “Saving in the short term almost never amounts to genuine savings when it comes to delaying care.”