During an economic collapse or "Great Depression", what happens to personal debt?

As a result of a personal situation I have bee wondering what happens to the debt of the average Joe when the economy goes belly up, banks close their doors, etc?

I'm not sure how accurate they are, but it seems like movies and things I have read about the Great Depression portrayed banks as simply closing their doors and not giving people the money they had deposited there. If we were to dive into the same type of economic nightmare, would the same thing happen to day with people's money? And how would the banks treat personal debt? Would they continue to expect payments even though they refuse to give people the money they deposited?

I don't know if we can even answer those questions without actually going through the experience. But if anyone has some sort of educated guess, I'm really interested in learning more, especially about the debt part.

Dang...I just realized I may have put this into the wrong forum. My apologies if I have!

[edit on 18-9-2008 by John_Q_Llama]