Mind: Lenders Should Help Debtors More

People who are heavily in debt and have mental health problems should be more sensitively treated by creditors, Mind has said.

The charity claims that lenders are treating mentally ill customers very harshly under the circumstances, and emphasises that they should always stick to the guidelines provided by the Money Advice Liaison Group, which encourage good practice.

Previous research from Mind shows that a mental health problem is the most common factor cited by indebted people as to why they first fell into financial trouble, equal to living on a low income.

Speaking yesterday, a representative of the charity criticised some of the techniques used by creditors towards mentally ill people in reclaiming money owed. 

"People are experiencing phone calls almost as if they were being done on a shift system, so they were being called from eight in the morning until eight in the evening by different people on their landlines and their mobile phones, on top of receiving letters from the same financial organisations" she commented.

 "The people we've spoken to the sheer weight and pressure of the things they have received has made it too difficult to address. Some people will find that they just withdraw from it rather than being able to tackle it because they don't have the support it takes to face everything that is coming through all at once."

The comments were made in the wake of Mind Week, seven days of events organised by the charity designed to spotlight the problems that mentally ill people have with debt.