Recession hitting local marriages says Accord

Mullingar couples whose marriage or relationship have been affected by the economic downturn will have the chance to receive free counselling after ACCORD announced that it had seen a substantial increase in the numbers of couple in trouble due to financial difficulties.The Catholic counselling service said that financial difficulties are often a recurring theme in counselling sessions and Mullingar will now become the first place outside of Dublin to hold the specifically tailored workshops called HEART (Hopeful Emotions and Resilient Thinking). It is hoped that the project can then be rolled out across the country."If one person loses a job and they have always worked it can cause real problems for a couple," said Anne Coleman who runs the group's specialist education service on marriage."What we have found is that this issue is arising more and more when people come to us for counselling. Financial difficulties can be a huge strain for couples and when we ran the service in Dublin it was a huge success."The Mullingar team told us that they were keen to run the service here and what we are offering is workshops for couples which will make suggestions on what they could do next."What we are saying is okay, this is the situation, what can you do about this and what is next for your relationship."Nationally ACCORD has seen couples coming to them with money worries shoot up by a third in the last year alone while in previouly years finanical troubles bothered just a fifth of those seeking counselling.Unemployed men now make up almost 13 per cent of of the client list while unemployment rates among females remain largely unchanged.The message from ACCORD is to take action before problems become too difficult to fix. Couples are encouraged to acknowlege and accept the grief can can come from the loss of a job. After they have accepted the loss, further workshops deal with what can be done next."People can just sit and listen at workshops or they can join in it's entirely a personal choice," said Anne Coleman. "Numbers were small at the Dublin sessions but that was no harm because counsellors were able to devote more time to the couples."The first workshop will take place on April 22 at the Greville Arms and the second is scheduled for April 29. Both sessions are from 10.30am to 1pm and there is no charge.