Mental health and Money

TRANSCRIPT

Interviewer:

You're listening to the Morning show here on Youth Jam and as we do every Thursday, on the other end of the line I have with me Dr. Patrick Jones, founder of Perth Psychologist, who each Thursday comes on air to discuss a different facet of our mental well-being. The topic for this week is mental health and money. So to continue that discussion, here is Patrick Jones. Patrick, how have you been keeping this last week? 

Patrick:

I am well ready to go. 

Interviewer:

Awesome. Now last week we talked about mental health and work and it feels like money and work sort of go hand in hand, obviously, but in that way, money can be seen to play a key role in a lot of the lifestyle facets that we've discussed in the past as well. Not just work, but leisure, I suppose, and also relationships. So what are some of the ways it can therefore influence the standing of our mental health? 

Patrick:

Yeah. Well, I might start with a fascinating experiment that sort of shows the choice for some people that they gave people in a study the choice of either increasing their actual income, but as a result, it would be less than their peers. Option B was to keep their same income, but it would be greater than their peers. The surprise was that most people chose the second one because it's not so much just the money, what we call the absolute income, it's also the relative income to other people. And that sort of ties into the whole self-esteem stuff. That predictor of self-esteem primarily is social comparison and that's really when the relationship with money has gone south and it hasn't gone too well. 

So I think it always comes back to this event-based well-being model versus the inner well-being model. And I think we have to have our heads screwed on straight when it comes to money as well. 

Interviewer:

Yeah, in that way it also seems that there's a degree to which our approach to money and the impact it has on us is dependent on our focus. So in what ways can our focus on money therefore become detrimental? 

Patrick:

Yeah, well, the research again says there are negative correlations between well-being and how we view money. For example, if we use it as a means to determine our status and seek some kind of power, it's those beliefs are negatively correlated with well-being. If you have those kinds of beliefs around money you'll be more likely to have a lower well-being in that area. But if you view it as either a resource to implement your ideas as one of the kinds of key predictors or the other is to see money as a resource to assist others. It seems that it goes always back to what we call the motivation research intrinsic versus extrinsic or internal versus external. If we have kind of good reasons for the use of the money. 

It seems to be connected to having higher well-being. But if we have kind of more selfish, or not so much just selfish, but sort of almost insecure reasons for accumulating money, it tends to make us feel worse. So it always comes back to the mental relationship with whatever the life area is that we're looking at. 

Interviewer:

And one of the things we've discussed in the past is leisure. And money plays a role in that. In the scope of when you find things to do that are external to your work or sort of indulgences, you often do need money to be spent before you can then indulge in them. But that can also result in going too far in that direction and possibly bringing about some financial instability. How do we navigate the impulse to spend in perhaps the need to save? 

Patrick:

Yeah, well, you hit one of the predictors of lower well-being connected to money, and that particular one is called impulsivity. It's the tendency to impulse buy and not consistently manage. Money is correlated with negative well-being. So the predictors that are connected to a more positive relationship to it are things like having a written budget that is consistently followed, that's kind of connected with a higher sense of well-being, with money tendencies not just to impulse buy, but to plan activities that are in the direction of achieving financial goals. So it's having a plan, as they say. What is it if you fail to plan, then you plan to fail? I think in regards to money, that's quite relevant. I also think it's important to have a healthy relationship with it in that it's just a tool. 

It's a tool. Someone said that money just simply gives you options. It's not like we have to make a big deal about it. It's just simply a currency that we use for life choices and just if we're responsible with it. I think that's the kind of critical bit. 

Interviewer:

Patrick, in the unfortunate event, that financial uncertainty becomes inevitable or inescapable for us, what advice do you have around keeping a level headspace that'll help us work through it? 

Patrick:

Yeah, well, I think, as they say, three ways to look at something either as a problem, a challenge, or an opportunity. And I think if you try and see the opportunity bit, having financial uncertainty can also create an opportunity, at least from a personal level, to just uncover what your latent attachments might be. As they say, sometimes things are latent, we don't see them, and then issues or problems come up, like financial uncertainty and the attachments or the beliefs that we might have had around money go from latent unseen to manifest or seen. So first step, I will always think, is the opportunity for insight. It's like when I had it, I had no problems, but when I didn't. I got to see how attached I was to it and then perhaps I need to rethink that. 

So that's the first bit I would say we would look at. And the second is also, and I said, about having a healthy relationship to money and just looking at what it is a concept, it's simply a common currency that we've invented and what is its goal, so that we use it to express how much we value something, but it doesn't give us value. It's more just an expression of value. Originally, the barter system was the first point. So I think when things happen like financial uncertainty, it's important to just rethink how attached am I to money and whether have I got my identity a bit too connected to it. 

So that's kind of on the internal level, but then, of course, on the practical external level, it is important to then move into problem-solving mode and look at how I can make my life work. As I said money does give you options and it's important to just look at how I can be functional with it. One of the predictors, again, of money from the research is people who can see the difference between the actual income that they think they want and the minimum survival income, like, what do I need? And then what's on top of that and to sort of prepare for just making sure my basic needs are met.

And then once that's done, everything else is cream. Everything else I can then add to that. 

Interviewer:

One of the questions that I was theorizing and just sort of the scope of something that I could see as being a personal problem around money was to do with the relationships that form around it, or in the relationships in which money comes to be an influence within those. Acquiring money can be an independent pursuit, but it can also be interpersonal in the sense that often you need to be interacting with someone to do it. Occasionally there are relationships where money can become an unwanted pollutant in certain relationships, perhaps personal relationships where people are asking for loans or you feel that you're inclined to support someone, but that could put you at your financial disadvantage. What advice do you have around navigating independence as well as interdependence when it comes to money matters? 

Patrick:

Yeah, it was a government initiative at one point to encourage mates to give back the money they've borrowed from mates because they added it up in terms of nationally as being millions and millions of dollars of sort of unpaid mates not paying the $20 back and what. 

And you hear that anecdotally, don't you? You hear like, someone say, oh, I need to catch up with this person, but then I also bought them five drinks on a night out and they owe me $60, or something like that. 

Right. So I think the first step might be accountability, which I think is part of ethics in terms of being responsible with people and being able to if you can't, then you need to kind of have an honest conversation around that. Obviously when you talked about the pollutants reminded me of the quote, money is the root of all evil. And I think, again, it's just important to look at just why that is and what is it connected to. It's connected to the power that potentially people can get used to. So I think that's important in terms of ethically being honest and clear and transparent. Again, there's research on ethics and businesses that found that businesses with ethical mission statements were seven times more successful than businesses that didn't. 

I remember going to Mechanics once and one of the three things on the reception desk in front, of them was transparency. And I thought, yes, they're going to hopefully have a really clear exchange in terms of what they're going to find wrong with my car. So I think that kind of honesty, transparency, openness is the first. Then I think Deepak Chopra has written a great little book called Creating Affluence. You can just read a page a day, A to Z, on different principles of what he separates abundance versus the poverty mentality, which also fits into the research on goals, which is that the brain must see it first. 

You must be able to at least have identified what you want and then, as they say, chance favors the prepared mind, then the brain can recognize it once you've got a clear goal beforehand. I think that's also important in terms of navigating how we have a relationship with money. And I probably think also the final bits here are having a quality of generosity and service versus just self-accumulation. I think it's very much correlated with well-being and also a sense of community, connection, and family. And then probably just finally, I would also say again, I was strong on the difference between a job being a sense of vocation versus a job hiring your brain and your body. And why that's important is because if you're expressing yourself through work, then what your value sort of comes out. 

And if money is an exchange of value, then that's also a great way to be able to earn money for something true for you, a true expression of you. So I think that there are some of the points that I would throw in that are important for people to consider in the relationship with money. 

Patrick:

Yeah, well, I'm finding and having these discussions with you, Patrick, where we're looking at different topics each week that they all sort of end up being inextricably linked. And the topic that I was going to look at for next week was mental health and relationships, I believe. And I feel like we've led very nicely into that. So thanks for getting in touch with us this week, Patrick, and I hope to speak to you again soon. 

Interviewer:

Yep, fantastic. And great topics. Enjoying them. 

Patrick:

Excellent. Take care.