‘You miss one payment and that’s it’: How problem debt is causing a mental health crisis

Just over a year ago, Robert Crackles’ financial problems finally came to a head.‘I was scrambling around, trying to borrow more money to cover the coming monthly payments,’ he remembers. ‘It reached a point where I was in some dingy office in the middle of Bradford, having an interview with a dodgy loans company to get some cash.’Robert, 42, owed lenders around £25,000 after he started borrowing money following a redundancy in 2009. Much of his debt was with