Debt and Mental Health: How One Couple Found Help

Decades ago, John Glover, a lawyer then in his early 30s with a wife and two children, found himself standing in a bank lobby trying to figure out how he could stretch what little remained in his account to cover his expenses.Foreclosure loomed.

He wanted to float a check, write it and worry about having the money in the account later.“There was just no money,” said Mr.Glover, who had gone out on his own to build a law firm, but was struggling with self-worth issues and becoming an entrepreneur.

“It was a dark time.I didn’t see a way out,” he said.Mr.

Glover focused on what he felt was the single most important problem: how to get through the next month, financially.His panicked mind turned to the accidental-death life insurance policy he had through the state bar.“And I thought, well, that would be a solution,” he said.He would need, he thought, to make his death look like an accident.

Then his family would get the life insurance money, which would solve the problem.The amount of the payout: just $5,000.In the tunnel vision of his crisis, this meager amount seemed like the answer.The thought passed, and he didn’t take that road.

Mr.Glover and his family lost their house to foreclosure, and he and his wife divorced a few years later.

But he lived through it.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe....