Why are people who live in poverty disproportionately affected by mental illness? We review the interdisciplinary evidence of the bidirectional causal relationship between poverty and common mental illnesses—depression and anxiety—and the underlying mechanisms. Research shows that mental illness reduces employment and therefore income, and that psychological interventions generate economic gains. Similarly, negative economic shocks cause mental illness, and antipoverty programs such as cash transfers improve mental health. A crucial step toward the design of effective policies is to better understand the mechanisms underlying these causal effects.

Why are people living in poverty disproportionately affected by mental illness? We review the interdisciplinary evidence of the bi-directional causal relationship between poverty and common mental illnesses -depression and anxiety -and the underlying mechanisms. Research shows that mental illness reduces employment and therefore income and that psychological interventions generate economic gains. Similarly, negative economic shocks cause mental illness, and anti-poverty programs, such as cash transfers, improve mental health. A crucial step toward the design of effective policies is to better understand the mechanisms underlying these causal effects.

The findings of this study point to a need for a range of school-focused interventions, as well as the inclusion of a number of potentially impactful variables within future quantitative research.

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