ATHANASIA CHALARI is a research fellow at the Hellenic Observatory in the London School of Economics. Her current research considers the impact of the Greek economic crisis on three generations of Greeks. She has held posts at Manchester and Cambridge Universities and is the author of “Why Greeks Interrupt Each Other: The phenomenon of ‘overlaps’ in everyday Greek Conversations”, published in 2012. We hear a lot about the crisis in Greece. What do we not know about it?

What is not realised is how much people are suffering. People feel insecure, pessimistic, angry, disappointed, afraid, depressed, anxious. Greek people feel the government has let them down and that the European Union does not care about them. They feel that everyone is trying to punish Greece.

How is that psychological suffering manifested? How can you measure it?

The most important indication is the increase in the suicide rate. Before the crisis Greece used to have one of the lowest suicide rates; now it’s one of the highest. According to the Ministry of Public Order suicides have increased 40% in the past year. Most of the suicides leave notes expressing how difficult it is for them to pay back their debts, they explain that they can’t support their families any more and that they feel hopeless and helpless. In these letters you can see the despair, anxiety and depression that people have to deal with.

Is it mostly middle-aged men committing suicide, as in Britain?

Yes. This is confirmed by my latest research. Older men feel particularly responsible for their families. The older generation has a more profound reason to suffer because they have lost more. They had more time to plan, invest and create and they see everything going back to the government; they have lost their homes and their fortunes.

Repossession is about to get worse because until now the law protected people with only one home but this law is now changing so many people will lose their homes in the near future.

How have younger people coped with the crisis?

This group [between age 20 and 30] is mainly concerned with the future. Students have told me they feel there is no point in studying because they’ll be just another unemployed graduate. Unemployment in Greece for 2013 is 28% but for 18-24 year olds it’s 64.2%. One in ten graduates has already moved abroad and six in ten are willing or planning to do so.

Are they angrier than the older group?

No. The younger generation is angry but is also busy trying to find alternative solutions. Many are trying to go abroad, but the older generation doesn’t have this option. They feel they have lost more and they have trusted politicians who have let them down, so the anger is more profound in this generation.

What about the 30-40s?

With this intermediate group the main feeling is their own responsibility for what has gone wrong. They are disappointed and have lost faith but they are very concerned with what they can do to improve things. Many Greeks seem more able to now accept and understand their own responsibility. There has been a tendency to ask politicians for personal favours that prioritise their personal interests. Previously there was no concern for the collective interest. The time has come for them to realise that this cannot work any more.

So there is a possibility that the crisis will turn out to have been positive.

Sociologically this is a certainty.

But isn’t there a risk of unrest in Greece?

Everything is possible right now. Times are extremely turbulent. The government has made efforts to marginalise Golden Dawn [a neo-Nazi party, which has 18 MPs in Greece’s 300-strong parliament] but the last polls found that around 12% of Greeks would vote for them if there were an election tomorrow. Golden Dawn capitalises on the anger of people and this is why they are successful. It may be the only party actively doing something to express their anger, even though most people now realise that it is not immigration that has caused the crisis.

So, what has caused the crisis?

It has to with our history and the fact that for the last century Greece has experienced limited periods of peace. Ironically, Greek democracy is one of the youngest in Europe.

After the military junta in 1974 Greek democracy was restored very quickly but it was not restored fully, and has never managed to create a well-organised state. Most sociologists would agree that in 1981, when the Greek Socialist Party came into power and tried to give hope the country’s poor, expenditure increased enormously and so did debt.

Another interesting point about the difficulty in reaching a consensus has to do with social linguistics, how Greeks talk.

How do Greeks talk?

Greeks are very loud and they interrupt each other very often. The reason for that is the Greek grammar and syntax. When Greeks talk they begin their sentences with verbs and the form of the verb includes a lot of information so you already know what they are talking about after the first word and can interrupt more easily.

And this makes the politics more chaotic?

Yes. The way politicians talk in parliament and the way politicians present themselves in the media obviously makes it harder to reach an agreement.