Mental Illness Rises Among the Jobless : Unemployment: As Southern California’s recession drags on, depression and unfocused anger are increasing to dangerous levels in many long-term unsuccessful job seekers, counselors say.

Thousands of long-term unemployed Southern Californians are growing angrier and more mentally ill each day their search for work fails, psychiatrists and job counselors say.

None may be sick enough to vent the festering frustration at the world through the barrel of a gun, as Alan Winterbourne did at an Oxnard unemployment office Thursday. But the number, illness and fury of the region’s long-term unemployed are growing dangerously as the recession drags on.

“There (are) very high frustration levels; they’re very quick to anger,” said Bill Souza, who has run a Ventura employment agency for nine years.

“With most of them, it’s unfocused anger,” he said Friday. “They’re nebulous about it--’I’ve been employed 20 years, I worked hard and now look at me, I’m not worth anything.’ . . . I call it economic homicide, and some (newly jobless) can get very vindictive.”

Psychologists and job counselors have no name for the fathomless, sometimes violent syndrome of unemployment-related depression.

But they say it is growing as layoffs, automation and corporate streamlining put more Southern Californians out of work and keep them out of work longer.

Mervyn Cooper, president of the American Psychotherapy Assn., based in Santa Monica, said psychologists are seeing more long-term unemployed people sunk into a vicious cycle of depression. Because their identity is so tightly linked to their jobs, professionals fall harder than most, Cooper said.

“The more training people have, the more they’re going to suffer” when they can’t find a job, said Cooper, a licensed social worker who specializes in unemployment-related depression. “They may eventually wonder why they were put on this earth . . . and they fall apart.”

Unable to find a job, some people let their grooming and manners go downhill, and eventually become someone employers would rather not hire, he said.

“The more they are out of work and the phone isn’t ringing and things aren’t happening, their physical appearance starts deteriorating,” he said. “It’s like putting a sign out saying, ‘Don’t expect too much of me.’ They put up barriers saying, ‘Don’t hire me’ because they don’t feel they have what it takes.”

Their home life can suffer. A lost job can become a parent’s excuse for foul moods, arguments and beatings, said Dr. Richard Reinhart, psychological director of the Ventura County Department of Mental Health.

Single working mothers are increasingly feeling the burden of financial responsibility added to the depression caused by job loss, but men are still hit hardest, Reinhart said. “This is going to sound like a sexist remark, but many, many men feel as though they should be the primary breadwinners in the family,” Reinhart said. “I know that women get depressed when they lose a job, particularly when they’re a single parent. . . . That’s hard. But in couples, when a husband loses a job, it’s much harder on him in terms of the expectations he has of himself.”

Therapists and job counselors advise depressed job-seekers to seek professional advice and peer support. They recommend that the unemployed join support groups through employment agencies or the state Employment Development Department.

“When you get a group of people who are struggling with the same problem . . . that is such a relief,” Reinhart said. “The successful groups are not just groups that offer people a chance to get out their gripes, but most of them also focus on very practical items such as how to search for jobs, how to write a resume and how to present yourself in an interview.”

Empathy for Winterbourne ran high Friday among the jobless in Ventura County, who say they battle frustration every day.

Isidro Meza, 28, of Moorpark said he could never see himself imitating Winterbourne’s murderous outburst.

“But you never know,” he said. “Other people are going to go out and do the same thing. It’s scary.”

Lawrence Madison Jr. of Moorpark said his frustration worsened when he encountered state Employment Development Department workers who seemed not to care.

“It builds up animosity in people,” said Madison, a union welder who often deals with the department between jobs. “You got a lot of people out there like that guy in Oxnard.”

Times staff writer Joanna M. Miller contributed to this report.