Economic stress and psychological well-being: An economic psychology framework

A multitude of studies, from a number of disciplinary approaches, have found social and economic factors which are correlated with various measures of mental well-being. The large number of different socioeconomic variables studied, and the variety of methods utilized, have made it difficult to draw conclusions from this literature, although much of it has been set out in terms of environmental stress. Economic psychology provides a useful organizing framework for this literature, through which a variety of socioeconomic factors can be visualized as varying along dimensions from relative benefits (low risk) to relative costs (high risk) in relation to a variety of subjective and objective measures of behavior and mental health. This framework forms the basis for the Economic, Demographic and Social Characteristics Questionnaire (EDSCQ). The twenty economic items from the Economic subscale of the EDSCQ were administered to a sample of outpatients, inpatients and a normal control group in Western Canada. The economic items differentiated between the three groups, with the clinical samples exhibiting higher economic risk. Within the clinical group, higher economic risk was associated with higher levels of psychological distress. The pattern of economic risks differed between those with and those without financial support from a spouse or ex-spouse.