Research on Finances & Mental Health

Annie Harper, PhD, was recently featured for her research on financial security as a social determinant of health by the Root Case Coalition. Harper’s work as an anthropologist has been supported by the Connecticut Mental Health Center Foundation since 2012, when she was initially recruited to research the relationship between poverty and recovery from mental illness. Harper has gone on to conduct several other studies on the topic of finances and mental health through the Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health. Harper’s published work suggests that financial services have the ability to make banking more accessible for vulnerable consumers with tools like third-party view-only accounts, self-imposed spending limits, and customized alerts. The Root Cause Coalition noted that research like Harper’s is relevant to the 2020 Status of Health Equity Report, which will be launched on February 26th, 2020.

You can read The Root Cause Coalition’s full article here.