Money is a point of contention for many couples. It’s notorious for causing conflicts and ruining relationships. The problem? “Money is very central to people’s identity,” according to Jonathan Rich, Ph.D, psychologist and author of The Couple’s Guide to Love & Money.

It can represent everything from status to success to even self-worth, he said. And partners have the power to influence each other’s finances, which can trigger arguments and anger, he added.  

It also can reveal underlying problems between spouses. “If a couple lacks trust and has difficulty working together, these conflicts always play out financially,” Rich said.

To make matters worse, our shaky economy can create or perpetuate stress. “With the current economy, financial stress is a huge issue and it can easily divide a couple and lead to blame,” he said.

This guest article from YourTango was written by Mary Jo Rapini.  

“People are made to be loved and things are made to be used. The confusion in this world is that people are used and things are loved.” — Author Unknown.

I watched 20/20 last week with millions of others to see the aftermath of destruction that followed the scandal Bernie Madoff put in motion. The story depicted the results of greed, deception, narcissism, and destruction when you value money more than anything else. Closer to home, with the current economic situation, loss of jobs, loss of income, and loss of respect from a business you have worked for most of your life, it’s tough to find a balance.

When does stuff become too much? How much do we need to survive happily as a family?

Money is a major stressor. In fact, finances top the list as the biggest source of holiday strain, according to a recent Mental Health America survey. And it makes sense.

Take gift-giving, for instance. “Holiday gift giving is often a very public event, fraught with comparisons, excitement, and disappointment,” said Jonathan Rich, Ph.D., psychologist and author of The Couple’s Guide to Love & Money. Pricey presents tend to disappoint less, he said. “So we often go way over budget because it’s such a pleasure to give a thrilling gift and so distressing to give a gift that disappoints.”

Overspending for the holidays can leave you super stressed, in debt and pinching your pennies on the more important things. But you don’t have to feel like a slave to Santa’s wish list. Below are 10 ideas to help you reduce your spending, create a budget and fret less about your finances.

Consider these alarming statistics:

* By 2020, behavioral health disorders will surpass all physical diseases as a major cause of disability worldwide.

* Of the more than 6 million people served by state mental health authorities across the nation, only 21 percent are employed.

* More than half of adolescents in the United States who fail to complete high school have a diagnosable psychiatric disorder.

* Between 2009 and 2011 states cumulatively cut more than $1.8 billion from their budgets for services for children and adults living with mental illness.

* In 2009, there were an estimated 45.1 million adults aged 18 or older in the United States with any mental illness in the past year. This represents 19.9 percent of all adults in the U.S.

*Serious mental illnesses cost society $193.2 billion in lost earnings per year.

* The annual total estimated societal cost of substance abuse in the U.S. is $510 billion.

* In 2008, an estimated 9.8 million adults aged 18 and older in the U.S. has a serious mental illness.

With our economy still in the toilet, states and federal government threaten to cut even more dollars in mental health funding, which would result in less or no access to mental health treatment and services for countless Americans. Ultimately the cuts steal the one thing that keeps those of us struggling with chronic mood disorders alive: hope.

Advertising has a history of employing various tools and tricks to boost sales. Nowadays, thanks to sophisticated technology, “…businesses, marketers, advertisers, and retailers have gotten far craftier, savvier, and more sinister,” writes marketer and consumer advocate Martin Lindstrom in his book Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy.

In it, Lindstrom reveals the many ploys companies use to seduce, soothe, tempt and scare us into buying their products. Here are a few tidbits from the book to help you become a smarter, sharper consumer.

1. They mix amusement with ads.

Some food companies disguise their ads as entertainment, which of course is especially appealing to kids. According to a 2009 report from the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University, the biggest cereal companies, General Mills, Kellogg’s and Post used games to peddle their least nutritious cereals.

For instance, Lucky Charms has a game on their website that lets kids track Lucky the Leprechaun’s various adventures, and Honey Nut Cheerios lets kids create a comic strip with the mascot BuzzBee.

Lindstrom says that using games as ads greatly benefits companies in important ways: “They allow marketers to circumvent the regulations on advertising junk food on television”; “they spread virally…[kids] unwittingly become guerrilla brand ambassadors; and “these games are inherently addictive in nature.”

A little while ago, I was laid off from my last job, and then this book called The Intuitive Investor shows up.

Pretty good timing, I’d say.

And while the topic would not be one I would normally pick up, I was especially intrigued by the combination of intuition and investment because, well, now I am back to being poor and could use all the financial advice I could get. So I decided to interview the author, Jason Apollo Voss.

1. While I understand intellectually how one needs to invest with the right and left brain, I need to know how exactly you get the two parts of your brain to work in tandem. My two brains like flipping each other the bird. How can I make them get along?

The short answer is to increase your consciousness about how you are making decisions. This is because scientifically it has been consistently demonstrated that there is no true physical distinction between the left and right brains.

Miami and Medicare fraud. The two go hand-in-hand like a baby in a basket.

So it probably wasn’t the brightest idea for Lawrence Duran and Marianella Valera to set up a company called American Therapeutic to run a chain of seven mental health clinics in South Florida and Orlando that duped Medicare into paying out $87 million during the past decade.

It probably didn’t help that, in order to perpetuate their fraud against U.S. taxpayers, they held “charting parties” — gatherings where “they would falsify the medical records of beneficiaries to make it look like they needed therapy when they actually didn’t,” according to the Miami Herald.

In the past week, both have been given huge prison sentences — 50 years for Lawrence Duran and 35 years for mental health counselor Marianelle Valera, who will be looking to be released from prison when she’s 75 years old.

Crime doesn’t pay, not even in mental health.

According to DJ Jaffe, co-founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center which advocates for mandated outpatient treatment laws, California is “eliminating mental illness treatment.”

This, of course, will be a surprise to the tens of thousands of mental health providers in California. Millions of Californians currently receive treatment for their mental disorders, both in the private and public sector.

In fact, Californians wanted to make up for past deficiencies in funding their mental health services, so they passed a law in 2004 that set aside new money specifically to help fund treatment.

Jaffe claims the money isn’t going to the programs it was intended to fund. Should we take his word for it?

Thank goodness the Wall Street Journal isn’t known for its outstanding health reporting.

In a story written by Rachel Emma Silverman, she reports on some preliminary research recently presented at a management conference. Like a lot of research that gives us “surprising” results, it was done on a single group of 96 undergraduate students at a single college campus.

And the task designed for the college laboratory setting by the researchers would be difficult to characterize as analogous to most people’s work environment or jobs — it was highlighting every single letter “e” or, in the second part, “a,” while reading.

The question the researchers asked — Can surfing the Internet help you to become a more productive employee?

Sometimes you just have to shake your head — the more things change, the more they stay the same.

It can really be depressing to see how, 3 years after the federal mental health parity act was passed, the company known primarily for underwriting students loans — Sallie Mae — is discriminating against people with a mental illness.

It’s doing so through one of its myriad of products called tuition refund insurance, something that allows you to reclaim up to 100 percent of your tuition if an illness strikes you while you’re in school. But not just any illness — it has to be a physical illness. If a mental illness strikes you, you will only get 75 percent of your tuition returned.

There’s a silver lining on this cloud… suggesting change may be forthcoming. So here’s a blog entry to help push that change through.

“…our challenge is twofold: We have to find a way to cover all our people; and we have to figure out how to get better value for the US$2 trillion we currently spend on healthcare.”
– David M. Cutler, Otto Eckstein Professor of Applied Economics at Harvard University and Member of the Institute of Medicine -commenting on the US healthcare system.

Last month I was invited to speak for a week for The International Certificate Programme in Dual Diagnosis associated with Brock University under the guidance of Dr. Dorothy Griffiths & Dr. Frances Owen. Work I’ve developed over the past several years on psychotherapy for people with intellectual disabilities has been implemented in the States and most of the countries with socialized medicine.  The Canadians have a real flair and passion for this work, and I savor the opportunity to travel there to teach and train.

The night before I began I treated myself to a day on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls.  Although my diet is mainly vegetarian, I often supplement with fish entrees when I travel.  A restaurant with herb-crusted salmon special and organically grown vegetables caught my eye.  The dinner was delicious.

But around 2 a.m. my stomach heated up and soon I was revisiting the herb-crusted delight.  Naturally I thought it was a bad piece of fish, and vowed to mend my ways back toward vegetarianism.

I was better — but not well.

I don’t know of anyone who doesn’t have a money problem right now, in this economy. Even the wealthiest of the wealthy are fretting because the fortunes they stashed in bonds and stocks aren’t performing with the same gust of the 90s, and, even if you have 5 billion dollars, seeing that figure change by a half of a billion produces anxiety and pacing. I wouldn’t know. But I’m guessing.

So it was with interest I read financial advisor Karen Lee’s book, It’s Just Money, So Why Does It Cause So Many Problems?. Lee has worked in the financial services industry since 1987. During that time, she has worked with hundreds of families, individuals, and small businesses to help them work towards their financial goals. And to boot, she’s a regular guest expert on CNN.

Here are six tips she offers in her book to “transform your money life.”