Fintech for Psychological and Financial Resilience: Determinants of Financial Data Sharing Behavior for Individuals with Bipolar Disorder

Financial stability is a key challenge for individuals with bipolar disorder, a serious mental illness requiring life-long management. Symptomatic periods often lead to poor financial decision-making, including compulsive spending and risky behaviors. Widespread consumer adoption of financial technologies ("fintech") has accelerated in recent years, with numerous consumer-centric applications providing insight into personal financial behavior in exchange for access to financial data. We believe these technologies can be applied to meaningfully support individual resilience in this population and, potentially, the resilience of families and surrounding networks of care. However, little is known about this population's unique perspectives, expectations, or privacy preferences related to financial data sharing for these purposes. To this end, we deployed an online survey (N=480) to assess the privacy expectations of individuals with bipolar disorder surrounding the use of financial data as an early-warning indicator of symptoms. A factorial vignette design allowed us to vary vignette dimensions across the granularity of financial data types, context of potential data use, and recipient of data insights. This exploratory analysis demonstrates that individuals are most comfortable sharing financial data when they were the only party to receive algorithmically-generated insights, while factors such as context of use and granularity of data types were less significant. Individuals who were most willing to engage creditors or other financial technologies for assistance were significantly more willing to share with family members and clinicians.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, conference workshop paper (DIS 2023 - Designing for and Reflecting upon Resilience in Health and Wellbeing

Financial technologies (FinTech) for mental health: the potential of objective financial data to better understand the relationships between financial behavior and mental health

Financial stability is a key challenge for individuals with mental illnesses. Symptomatic periods often manifest in poor financial decision-making including compulsive spending and risky behaviors. This article explores research opportunities and challenges in developing financial technologies (FinTech) to support individuals with mental health. Specifically, we focus on how objective financial data might lead to novel mental health assessment and intervention methods. We have used data from one individual with bipolar disorder (i.e., an N=1 case study) to illustrate feasibility of collecting and analyzing objective financial data alongside mental health factors. While we have not found statistically significant trends nor our findings are generalizable beyond this case, our approach provides an insight into the potential of using objective financial data to identify early warning signs and thereby, enable preemptive care for individuals with serious mental illnesses. We have also identified challenges of accessing objective financial data. The paper outlines what data is currently available, what can be done with it, and what factors to consider when working with financial data. We have also explored future directions for developing interventions to support financial wellbeing and stability. Furthermore, we have described the technical, ethical, and equity challenges for financial data-driven assessments and intervention methods, as well as provided a broad research agenda to address these challenges

Peer delivered services and peer support for people living with bipolar disorder: A scoping review protocol

Background: Numerous barriers exist to accessing treatment for bipolar disorder (BD). Peer support interventions may help increase the availability and acceptability of supports for people living with BD, and may be particularly well-suited for improving recovery and quality of life. There is evidence to support the potential of peer support interventions for improving wellbeing, clinical outcomes, and access to care. However, to date, no reviews of peer support interventions have specifically focused on BD. This scoping review aims to describe the experience and impacts of peer support for BD. Methods and analysis: A scoping review will be conducted following the frameworks of Levac et al. (2010), based on the foundational work of Arksey and O'Malley (2005). To investigate the quantitative and qualitative evidence for peer support interventions in BD, we will search MEDLINE (via Ovid), EMBASE (via Ovid), and PsycINFO (via EBSCOhost) using terms related to peer support and BD (developed through review of the previous literature and consultation with a medical librarian). All study designs reporting qualitative or quantitative data on the impacts and experiences of peer support for people with BD will be included. Extracted data will include study characteristics, participant demographics, key characteristics of the intervention, outcomes, and subjective experiences. Discussion: This review is expected to provide evidence to support healthcare decision makers by identifying promising peer support interventions for BD. We anticipate that scoping review findings will guide future research to help build a stronger evidence base for the development, evaluation, and implementation of peer support interventions for this population