Kent Gleaton admits to living one day at a time after being unemployed for the past eight months.

He did cabinetry work at a North plant and was able to do fairly well. That was until he lost his job. Life has been anything but easy for the 53-year-old.

With no transportation and a disconnected telephone, a bicycle is his primary mode of travel. He is living on unemployment insurance, but often finds it hard navigating through the state Employment Security Commission’s system.

His food stamp benefits have also been dropped because he failed to remit a wage form that was given to him to be completed and returned, he said.

“You always stay broke. I don’t know how to manage money. It’s just something about me and managing money. I got enough money to run a household, so to speak. A lot of times when the Lord wakes me up, I look in the mirror sometimes and think about the person that I see because I know there’s a better person,” said Gleaton, who sat at a kitchen table strewn with uncompleted paperwork.

“I got all this paperwork. They cut my food stamps off. That’s something I need to follow up on. I’m doing well. I’m hanging, surviving,” he said.

His family, including four brothers and a sister, have been a tremendous support system for him, he said, adding that water and light bills are often taken care of by at least one of them.

“God knows I’m not perfect, but just keep the faith and pray foremost. I’m still here. I’m trying to do the right thing. It’s unfortunate to be unemployed. I’ve just got to keep my head on straight. But in the future, I don’t know about that. I’m just living for the present,” he said.

Gleaton’s story is not uncommon among citizens of Orangeburg County, where the unemployment rate in October stood at 17.8 percent.

Having a strong support system like Gleaton’s is an important part of coping with the stress of unemployment, one area psychiatrist says.

“The reality is it’s more of a philosophical issue. What’s your philosophy of life? I remember back in the old days they used to say, ‘If I don’t make $25 million by the time I’m 25, I’m gonna kill myself.’ That doesn’t sound healthy, but that’s what they said. To me, it depends on where they’re coming from. Money is their orientation,” said Dr. Glenn Hooker, a psychiatrist with the Orangeburg Area Mental Health Center.

“We can’t solve a money problem. If you think you’ve got to make that much money by then, obviously your mental health is not as good as it should be, but that’s not anything that you could seek treatment for. You don’t see anything wrong. You’re following a philosophy, that belief system that you want to follow,” Hooker said.

Is depression a threat among those looking for work? Hooker said the term depression is often used so loosely that its true meaning is rendered useless.

“The word depression is used now so popularly. If I stub my toe on my way out to the party and I can’t go, I’m depressed. That doesn’t mean I should seek mental health because that’s more like disappointment, but we use the term depression. So, what people often have is not a mental health disorder or depression, but a reaction to a circumstance. It’s a direct reaction to social, political and economic factors outside of my control,” said Hooker, noting that true depression occurs whether life is going well or not.

He said there are individuals, however, who are more sensitive to societal pressures and may succumb to true mental illness.

“They succumb to the major psychotic disorders, schizophrenia, bipolar. If you have a legitimate mental illness and once a diagnosis is made, we deal with whether a person requires psychotherapy, psychotherapy with medication, referral to other services like drug and alcohol services or to the Department of Disabilities and Special Needs,” Hooker said.

“We’re all suffering from the stress in society. We’re all not as happy as we could be. As the stresses increase in society, you start seeing more people develop mental disorders. Stresses affect everybody’s mental health, but how it manifests itself as a mental disorder depends on the person,” he added.

Hooker said everything from something as simple as learning how to “relax and breathe properly” to the formation of a good support system is key in grappling with the stress of being unemployed.

“Without a support system or a moral compass in these stressful societal times, you’re liable to do anything. Support can be church, family, friends – and I mean true friends – or the mental health system. We care. We do a lot of support for people who come in to just sit and talk,” he said.

Visit T&D Datatrack for an in-depth look at South Carolina’s unemployment stats, 1999-current.

TheTandD.com/datatrack

T&D Staff Writer Dionne Gleaton can be reached by e-mail at dgleaton@timesanddemocrat.com or by phone at 803-533-5534. Discuss this and other stories at TheTandD.com.

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