Financial Wellbeing and Mental Health: A Systematic Review

Abstract

The aim of this study is to identify and appraise literatures on relationships between financial well-being and mental health. Conducting a systematic review on what is available from the literature is fundamental as a mean for keeping track of the study progress and synthesizing the emerging setting. The search was performed using related keywords of the two constructs from Psychinfo, Scopus and Google Scholar databases between the year 2001 and 2019. The initial search yields a combination of 2,222 papers and after performing the exclusion criteria, a total of 37 documents were used as the data.  Analyses of the studies were conducted to answer the questions of what are the measures of financial wellbeing and mental health and how does financial wellbeing affect mental health? The findings suggest a diverse perspective of financial wellbeing and the term financial hardship, financial situation, financial strain, financial stress and financial security that carry similar meaning were used in literature. There were also various indicators that measure mental health and the use of CES-D, Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI), general health questionnaire (GHQ-28), Mental Health Index (MHI-5), International Diagnostic Interview (WHO-CIDI), Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, Goldberg Depression and Anxiety Scales, Depression Anxiety Stress (DASS-21) and Kessler 10 Measure of Psychological Distress (K10) was common. There is an increasing trend of the study and also consistent findings that indicate for a significant relationship between financial wellbeing and mental health.  Hence, taking proactive prevention to keep healthy financial wellbeing such as financial educating and financial literacy is very crucial to reduce the burden of mental depression, and further the burden of healthcare and social protection.