A long time ago, I ran across a review of a play or book about chronically-unemployed Irish men and their infidelity and violence towards their families. The reviewer asserted that the men were trying to prove themselves sexually or physically to compensate for having failed economically. I have no particular expertise in psychology, but recent discord on TPM reminds me of the idea that people, particularly men, might react very badly to unemployment. A quick Google brought me to this rather dry abstract :

Predicting self-esteem during unemployment: the effect of gender, financial deprivation, alternate roles, and social support.

… Arguably one of the most damaging, and certainly one of the most commonly reported, of all the psychological consequences of unemployment is a loss of self-esteem (Sheeran & Abraham, 1994; Waters, 2000; Winefield, Tiggemann, & Winefield, 1992). Among others, Amundson and Borgen (1987) and Amundson (1994) have characterized unemployment as an experience that leads to self-doubt and an internal struggle with confidence.
…
… the bulk of evidence suggests that gender is an important factor in psychological reaction to unemployment. More particularly, the results often show that during unemployment, men report poorer psychological health than do women (Najam, Ashraf, Nasreen, Bashir, & Khan, 1996). For example, Shamir (1985) found that unemployed men experienced lower morale and higher anxiety than did unemployed women.
…
Loss of role identity has been shown to be a major contributor to lowered self-esteem during unemployment (Bolton & Oatley, 1987). Hence, one factor that may reduce the impact of unemployment on self-esteem is the availability of alternate non-employment-related roles (Dilnot & Kell, 1988; Fielden & Davidson, 1999). Jahoda (1982) and Warr and Parry (1982) argued that roles such as spouse, parent, and community worker can be used as psychological compensations for the loss of one’s role as employee.

Now we seem to be headed towards a period of high unemployment, both here in the US and in the world. The knee-jerk response to massive economic deprivation seems to be survivalism: Get yourself some guns and lots of freeze-dried goods because the world will soon resemble (pick one):

Lord of the Flies
Mad Max
Zardoz
Children of Men
The Road

I know which one I’d pick:

… but whenever I think about owning a gun, I recall one history professor, who pointed out that during the great American Westward expansion, more settlers were killed by the accidental discharge of firearms than by actual conflict with each other or with the native peoples they encountered.

Rather than jumping the gun on survivalism, I’m more worried about what happens during the transition away from what we think of as a normal society. Orlov described Russian men who, after the fall of the Soviet Union, methodically drank themselves to death. Others were killed in black market squabbles. Crime is of course a concern, political turmoil may be a concern, but getting along with the people in your safety net is probably the more immediate concern.

How are your father, husband, boyfriend, brothers or sons going to handle losing their jobs?

How are you going to handle it?