Supporting Financial Wellbeing for Individuals with Serious Mental Illness
Mental health is a critical public issue globally. Financial stability is essential for successful rehabilitation and quality-of-life for individuals with mental illness. Our project aims to understand and prevent problematic financial behaviors, which can lead to improved mental health outcomes. The project will also contribute to novel data analysis and machine learning frameworks for granular assessment and personalized interventions. We will establish design guidelines to support the financial wellbeing of vulnerable populations and their care partners.
There is a strong association between mental illness and financial instability. For example, manic episodes in bipolar disorder can lead to compulsive buying and risk-taking behaviors. We are developing user-centric, privacy-preserving financial technologies (FinTech) that leverage open banking data to: i) identify problematic financial behaviors; and ii) provide personalized interventions to reduce risk of harm for individuals with mental illnesses.
Our project can lead to novel, supportive technologies to empower individuals with mental illness to achieve financial stability and independence. It can also reshape the design and development of financial technologies, contributing to the idea of FinTech for good”. We hope to develop a novel, privacy-preserving, and user-centric computational framework for financial data analysis and personalized interventions. The outcomes can also inform policies toward accessible financial tools that can be integrated into mental healthcare.
Papers
- Johnna Blair, Jeff Brozena, Mark Matthews, Thomas Richardson, and Saeed Abdullah. (2022). Financial technologies (FinTech) for mental health: The potential of objective financial data to better understand the relationships between financial behavior and mental health. Frontiers in Psychiatry.
Support
Support for this research is provided by the SSRI Large Pilot Award grant.
People
Johnna Blair
Jeff Brozena
Mark Matthews
Thomas Richardson
Erika Saunders
Dahlia Mukherjee
Saeed Abdullah