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BONITA SPRINGS — Recessions don’t last. Suicide and divorce does.

Local experts in finance, psychology and daily life are sharing the same advice to those overcome with anxiety, stress or depression associated with the country’s recent financial and economic conundrums. Don’t worry, they say, be happy.

Sure, tell that to the clients of Petra Jones, executive director of the Mental Health Association of Southwest Florida. And tell them soon, because she is worried about their physical health as well as their mental well being.

So does that mean an increase in local suicides is possible?

“Yes, absolutely,” Jones says.

Divorce?

“In an economic downturn, you have an increase in divorces,” Jones said. “We provide divorce education to parents and we’ve seen a dramatic increase in divorces.”

Drug and alcohol use?

“I think more to take away the edge of the depression or the anxiety and just also out of frustration and fear,” Jones said.

To be sure, it’s not just the stock market that causes a mental health recession within an individual, as Jon Brunner points out. He’s a licensed psychologist and directs Florida Gulf Coast University’s counseling and health apparatus.

“Any situation that creates a lot more ambiguity for anyone, and thus creates more anxiety, they begin to worry, they begin to feel discomfort and sometimes people lose sleep,” Brunner said. “Some people have more hardiness and they can roll with these things, but people who are more prone to worry and signs of anxiety and are irritable and have trouble sleeping and eating — people who are prone to that have more problems.”

So, what can those less hardy people do? Well, don’t get fixated on doom, for one thing, says Brunner. Be healthy. Maintain a normal routine. And talk. A lot.

“They should talk to a financial advisor,” opines Terry Rand, the president of his own Naples-based investment firm, Rand Financial Advisors, LLC. He has received a few phone calls over the last week, during which the stock market averages lost almost a quarter of their value.

“I’ve been changing adult diapers here at a rate of 10 a day,” Rand said from his Naples office Friday. “This is my seventh financial crisis. I’ve been fully licensed for 50 years and this is the worst I’ve seen it.”

But it’s not all doom and gloom, Rand said. If you’re an older investor, the market will turn around, he said. If you’re a younger investor, this may be the time to spend money, he said, when the price is low.

“You can’t do anything about it. You’re going to keep spending,” Rand said. “Now is the time to buy a car, for example. Now is the time to be investing, right now, but the emotions keep people from doing that.”

By that rationale, it would seem a decline in the stock market isn’t causing a mental dive. By Rand’s rationale, it would seem like it’s the other way around.

Carol Clark knows that rationale well. She works for the private asset management firm Lowry Hill, which has a Naples office. She’s been doing stocks for 25 years. Lately, she is big into behavioral finance, the field that has brought new wisdom to financial thinkers. She said it’s discarding the old belief that investors generally make sound financial decisions.

“How anyone can continue to believe that investors behave rationally is beyond me,” Clark said. She spoke just after the markets closed on Friday, a wild ride for investors when the Dow Jones Industrial Average swung more than 1,000 points from a low of 7,883 points to a high of 8,901 points.

Advents in brain imaging technology have allowed financial thinkers to see with their own eyes the parts of the brain that light up when investors are exposed to risk or reward, Clark said. Such research leads her to believe that stock prices are, in fact, significantly impacted by investors’ mental health — their hardiness.

“They are more troubled by losses than they are by euphoric gain,” Clark said. “When it comes to losing, people take it more personally. It just hurts more.”

Clark and Rand both agree on two other complicating factors. It’s the number of investors, which has increased dramatically since the last major financial crisis in 1987. Then, about 5 percent of Americans owned stock. Now, it’s more like 50 percent.

“The people who are invested now didn’t experience ‘87,” Rand said. “So, they are new to the game. The normal recovery period is nine months.”

It’s also the 24-hour national news networks, they say, a trough of doom and gloom for the worry worts.

“The news media really accelerates the emotion,” Rand said. “When you sell newspapers or television shows, obviously you’re going to attract more readers with emotion. You accelerate the panic.”

Rand said this has been “the most interesting month in American history,” because headline writers have been flush with a treasure trove of stories about global conflict, international financial meltdown and the upcoming election.

“A good thing is that we’ve got the World Series,” Rand said.

Nonetheless, Clark said the media was turned off by the end of last week.

“The one thing that was interesting to me about this week, by the time it was Wednesday or so, even the media stopped trying to find a reason why the market went down,” Clark said. “It got to the point that people were selling because everybody else was.”

Bonita Springs resident Tom O’Neill, 79, wasn’t selling. He seems the hardy type. The decline in his portfolio hasn’t caused him much strife. He said he has lost what he gained in recent years, about $300,000 or $400,000.

“It hasn’t had that affect on me,” O’Neill said when asked if a recession can cause depression. “Although, I can understand how people who are perhaps a bit less fortunate might be anxious, especially people who are seeing their 401k drop dramatically day to day.”

Brunner said hardy individuals like O’Neill often look at ambiguous situations as a challenge, something to overcome, to be won.

“Frame it in a certain way,” Brunner said. “If it’s terrible and awful in a way, then you’re going to have more problems than if you frame it as a challenge.”

Melissa Moran has been framing worries her whole life. The 36-year-old Bonita resident said she’s got it figured out, despite her husband’s continually declining retirement fund.

“It’s in my head and I know there is nothing I can do to change it,” Moran said. “I try not to worry about things I have no control over.”

If people are having problems, though, they need to seek help, says Jones. There are many services available at the alliance, she said, all of which have increased in use lately. Her team is organizing a support group for families facing foreclosure, she said.

“I think what I’m seeing is the people are actually looking for help and that’s positive, because there is help out there,” Jones said. “Encourage people to seek help. They are not alone and that’s an important aspect to help people integrate. People are not alone.”

Scott Bartlett of Bonita Springs turns to help from above. The 69-year-old was piling a fresh load of groceries Friday afternoon into the back of his Chevrolet Corvette. Outside the Publix supermarket on U.S. 41 near Old 41 Road in Bonita Springs, he noted that all of his financial advisors are Christian.

Perhaps they’ve got better guidance, he wondered. Like from the highest of financial markets. Recessions may come and go, he said, but faith in one’s life should not.

“The market has always come back ... you can let it get to you, or you can pray for guidance,” Bartlett said. “In a time like this, you need peace in your mind and peace in your heart.”