The telephone counselling service Lifeline says the number of calls about financial problems it has received this year is up by more than 80%.
Most of those calls were from people worried about having lost their jobs.
The national clinical manager of Lifeline, Melanie Ingram, says calls are usually about psychiatric problems and loneliness, and it's somewhat surprising that job loss has crept in amongst those.
She says more than half the callers to the Waikato service in 2009 were men, up from the usual 28%.
Ms Ingram says Lifeline takes 80,000 calls a year through its nine centres but would like to deal with even more, so it can have a greater influence on the community's mental health.
The organisation says just talking to someone else can help callers through a maze of indecision to a point where solutions can be identified.
It also says talking can help to short-circuit stress that might otherwise lead to depression and possibly suicide.
