The front page of the New York Times on Tuesday offered a news flash, if you've been living under a rock since you came into the world: A recent poll has found that extended unemployment can lead to despair.

Profiling three Americans ranging in age from 29 to 54, the article attempts to approach the problem of the unemployment crisis from a personal angle (the online version features additional subjects). It describes their previous jobs, the details of their layoffs, and their current plight, which often involves borrowing money from friends and family just to survive.

There's no question that we're facing a dire situation. While unemployment is finally down from its high a couple of months ago, hovering just below 10%, a great many people have been out of work for a very long time. Their benefits are running out or gone, and they are stuck between a rock and a hard place, broke, but too depressed and listless to imagine a solution to their problem.

The Times does a good job of reminding us that we're in a crisis, but do we really need a poll to tell us that unemployment leads to depression?

Perhaps, if you've never been out of work for long enough to start seeing life through a narrowing tunnel of darkness, the poll will be enlightening to you. Those of you who have known such misfortune, and escaped, can read the figures with sympathy and perhaps even faith. After all, nothing is forever. Thank goodness.

[Image: Lidia Ilona from Wikimedia Commons]