"A tight knot of social maladies"

In this column, the author says that despite its pervasive influence, poverty remains unmitigated and out of focus as a target of economic and policy intervention. The daily experience of living in poverty is excruciating and more pronounced than crossing a line. Mathew Desmond's (2023) description provides dimensions to the pernicious, cumulative influence of poverty when he writes: "Poverty is often material scarcity piled on chronic pain piled on incarceration piled on depression piled on addiction-on and on it goes. Poverty isn't a line. It's a tight knot of social maladies." The author believes that, we, who shaped this relentless movement of integrating mental and physical health are the right players to join a movement toward a tomorrow of ending poverty. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).