The final week of March is Debt Awareness Week, an initiative aimed at highlighting the problem of personal debt and urging decision-makers to take the right actions to mitigate them. This year’s theme is one we are all too familiar with – exploring the judgement and stigma that often surrounds debt.

The aim of the week is to challenge attitudes and help people access the support they need. But what about every other week of the year?

We recently published some research which was designed to find out what debt really means for people living with it every day. Based on the experiences of people who have come to their local Citizens Advice Bureaux (CAB) for help with multiple and complex debts, the numbers reveal a world of hard realities where climbing out of debt is much tougher than falling in.

There are two main routes into crisis debt. First, circumstantial change due to loss of income or large increases in essential spending, and second, a person can become worn down due to months or years of low income. Drivers include losing work, health........

© Herald Scotland