Layoffs are not new. The fear of losing one’s job has long been part of economic life. Recently announced job cuts at Johns Hopkins University, one of Maryland’s largest employers, and tens of thousands of others across the nation, however, are happening with an unsettling speed and efficiency, leaving countless workers in a state of anxiety, uncertainty and despair.

Beyond the immediate financial devastation, job loss shakes the very core of a person’s identity and self-worth. Work is more than a paycheck — it is purpose, structure and connection. Without it, many find themselves adrift, isolated and vulnerable to a worsening mental health crisis that has already reached epidemic proportions. The U.S. Surgeon General’s 2023 report labeled loneliness a national public health emergency. Joblessness only exacerbates that crisis, often progressing to depression, anxiety and in the worst cases, suicide. I see the human toll of economic instability every day in the patients I treat at a busy inner-city hospital. Some are deeply depressed, others openly suicidal, believing they have no way forward. Our team of doctors, nurses, social workers and case managers do everything we can — offering therapy, medication, crisis intervention — but some wounds run deeper than a prescription can fix.

Every year I teach a mental health course to MBA students, many of whom will enter government and corporate leadership roles. We discuss how work functions as a protective factor against isolation and depression, something that executives and policymakers too often overlook when making “strategic” decisions about layoffs.

Because the truth is, job loss doesn’t just impact individuals — it ripples outward, destabilizing entire families. Parents lose their homes. Children switch schools. Marriages fracture under financial and emotional strain. The burden of caring for a struggling loved one often falls on the same person now scrambling to find new work. Those who remain employed aren’t spared either; they experience survivor’s guilt, fear they’ll be next and question their loyalty to an employer that has proven how expendable they are.

And all of this is happening against a backdrop of national and global uncertainty: the scars of a pandemic, economic recession, a deeply divisive election cycle and an era of growing distrust in institutions. The erosion of job security has become another thread in the broader fabric of disillusionment. It is tempting to assign blame. It is easier to offer platitudes — “it could be worse,” “it will get better” — than to confront the depth of this crisis. But the people I treat don’t need empty reassurance. They need stability, opportunity and, above all, hope.

I cannot write a prescription for hope, nor can I hand out jobs. But I can remind people that resilience is often found in the same place it always has been: in the kindness of others, in the communities that rally around those in need, and in the relentless effort of rebuilding — one step, one job, one act of solidarity at a time.

Alan Langlieb is a Johns Hopkins-trained psychiatrist who practices in Washington, D.C., and Maryland and teaches at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business.