Hello Mayor de Blasio, Medium

Hello Mayor de Blasio,

My name is Gabi Holzwarth, and I, like your daughter and your father have also suffered a life of addiction
and depression. Like your daughter, I was lucky enough to get treatment for my condition, and I am now
proud to say that I am in recovery, but this outcome is a rare one as you very well know.
Like your father and the rest of the 14.8 millions of Americans suffering from depression, most fall down
the road of addiction and never find a way out. I am not sure if you are aware, but one of the main
causes of depression and addiction in our country is unemployment. You can do a simple
Google search and find hundreds of medical articles detailing the strong correlation between
unemployment and depression/substance abuse, but I thought I would share some here:
1: Research suggests that being unemployed doubles a persons chance of a major depressive episode and
that unemployment is also highly associated with domestic violence and abuse.
2: Unemployment is a risk factor for psychological symptoms of depression requiring medical attention,
even in those men without previous psychological vulnerability.
3. Aggregate level studies typically find increased psychiatric problems between unemployment and
suicide rates over time. At the individual level of analysis panel surveys of laid-off workers tend to find

increased psychiatric problems such as depression and substance abuse.

4. Finally, in the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, it shows that 17% of unemployed workers had
a substance abuse disorder last year, whereas 9% of full-time workers did so. The numbers are selfreported, and therefore, could be even higher in reality.
The legislation that you are proposing to cap the number of drivers on the Uber system will create
unemployment for 10,000 individuals just through the end of this year. I am sure you have heard this
argument countless times by now, and perhaps it has not really registered with you on a personal level yet
about what you are doing to these individuals and their families. By reading this, I hope you can look at
your legislative proposal one more time from a more human side. I hope you can remember the pain that
depression has caused your very own family, and think about how by making this decision you are
inadvertantly but surely inflicting this very pain upon them.
To conclude with your very own words: My own father was an alcoholic. He could not, unfortunately,
tragically, find his way to this kind of help, this kind of recovery. But his granddaughter could. And she
did. Mayor de Blasio, you cannot be a father figure to tens and thousands of individuals but in your
unique role as mayor you can indeed make a profound impact in their lives by the decisions you make. I
hope you will make the right one.