There’s a revolution happening in mental health treatment, and it’s not coming from pharmaceutical companies or therapy offices. It’s coming from something far simpler and, in retrospect, far more obvious: giving people monthly unconditional income.

A new analysis of Finland’s basic income experiment has just added another brick to what is becoming an undeniable wall of evidence. In the groundbreaking experiment, two groups of unemployed people received an identical amount of money with identical regularity—€560 per month. The only difference was how they received it. One group got it unconditionally, with no strings attached. The other group got it conditionally, with requirements to look for work, report to unemployment offices, and satisfy bureaucrats. And the money went away with employment.

Same money. Different rules. The results?

In the control group receiving conditional benefits at the end of the trial, 24% had poor mental health. In the treatment group receiving unconditional basic income, only 16% had poor mental health. That’s an 8 percentage point reduction—a full 33% less poor mental health—simply from removing the conditions.

Let that sink in. It wasn’t the amount of money that made the difference. Both groups got the same €560 a month. It was the unconditionality itself—the simple act of trusting people with resources, without surveillance or judgment, without hoops to jump through or forms to fill out—that created these dramatic improvements in psychological well-being.

This new analysis, published in December 2025 by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research and the University of Helsinki, confirms what basic income advocates have long suspected: the conditions we attach to welfare aren’t just bureaucratic inconveniences. They are active harms. They create stress, anxiety, and psychological damage that persists even when the financial support is adequate.

The Finnish experiment, launched in 2017, was a two-year nation-wide randomized field experiment on basic income. Two thousand randomly selected unemployed people received €560 per month with absolutely no conditions—no requirement to look for work, no reporting to unemployment offices, no penalties if they found employment or earned additional income. A control group of over 173,000 continued receiving traditional conditional unemployment benefits of the same amount.

Both groups got essentially the same money. The treatment group’s administrative burden was simply lower—they received their €560 without any conditionality whatsoever. That’s it. That’s really the only difference that was tested.

The researchers measured mental health using the MHI-5, a validated five-item mental health screening instrument that identifies people at risk of mood and anxiety disorders. What they found was striking: the treatment group was significantly less likely to screen positive for poor mental health. The adjusted risk difference was 8 percentage points, with a 95% confidence interval between 3 and 12 percentage points. In plain English, they’re confident unconditional basic income reduced poor mental health by somewhere between 12.5% and 50%, with their best guess being 33%. This wasn’t a fluke or statistical noise—this was a robust, significant finding.

The treatment group was more satisfied with their lives, experienced less mental strain, less depression, less sadness, and less loneliness. They reported better cognitive abilities—improved memory, learning, and concentration. All from receiving the same money with fewer strings attached.

This isn’t an isolated finding. It’s part of a pattern so consistent it should be making headlines everywhere.

Perhaps the most fascinating finding from Finland wasn’t about mental health at all—it was about trust. The basic income recipients trusted other people and institutions in society to a larger extent than the control group. They were more confident in their own future and their ability to influence things.

“The basic income recipients trusted other people and the institutions in society to a larger extent and were more confident in their own future and their ability to influence things than the control group. This may be due to the basic income being unconditional, which in previous studies has been seen to increase people’s trust in the system.” [source]

Evidence from Malawi reinforces this pattern. In a cash transfer experiment with adolescent schoolgirls, those who received unconditional payments were 14 percentage points less likely to suffer from psychological distress compared to the control group. Girls who received the same money but with conditions attached—requiring regular school attendance—showed only a 6 percentage point improvement. So here, unconditional cash was 2.3 times better for mental health than conditional cash—a 133% improvement. Researchers attributed the gap to the psychological burden of meeting conditions. Even well-intentioned requirements like education can undermine the mental health benefits that cash provides.

Think about what this means. When society trusts you with resources—when it says “here, we believe you can handle this without us watching over your shoulder”—you begin to trust society back. And when you trust the people and institutions around you, you feel better. Your mental health improves.

I know in my own life, I’m going to feel better mentally if I trust every member of society more. That trust isn’t just nice to have—it’s foundational to psychological well-being. It’s hard to feel good about the world when you feel surveilled, suspected, and constantly required to prove your worthiness. Unconditionality removes that burden, and the mental health benefits follow.

The researchers also investigated whether basic income helped some groups more than others. Using three different analytical methods—conventional subgroup analysis, multilevel modeling, and machine learning (causal forest)—they looked for variations across age, gender, education level, prior employment status, urbanicity, partnership status, and family composition.

What they found was remarkable: the beneficial effects were consistent across all groups. Basic income didn’t help young people more than old people, or women more than men, or the less educated more than the highly educated. It helped everyone roughly equally. As the researchers put it: “Our results suggest that basic income schemes have no harmful effects on mental health across multiple potential axes of labor market disadvantage, and are unlikely to increase mental health inequalities among people in unemployment.”

This matters enormously for policy. One concern about universal basic income is that it might help some people while harming others—that perhaps it would reinforce traditional gender roles or disadvantage certain groups. The Finnish data shows this isn’t the case. Basic income is a universally beneficial policy for mental health.

Finland’s findings align with research from around the world. In Kenya, researchers conducted a rigorous study comparing the effects of a $1,076 unconditional cash transfer against a five-week psychotherapy program that cost almost three times as much. One year later, the cash recipients showed higher levels of psychological well-being than the control group. The psychotherapy recipients? No measurable effects on either psychological or economic outcomes.

Perhaps most telling: combining both interventions—giving people both cash and therapy—produced results similar to cash alone. The therapy added nothing. The money was doing all the work.

This shouldn’t surprise us. When someone is drowning in financial stress and bureaucratic anxiety, cognitive behavioral therapy can only do so much. The therapy isn’t addressing the actual problem. Cash—unconditional cash—does.

Fresh results from Germany’s three-year basic income pilot, published in April 2025, add even more weight to this evidence. Participants received €1,200 monthly for three years with no strings attached. The mental health improvements were, in the researchers’ words, “substantively large and robust.”

Mental health improved by 0.347 standard deviations. Sense of purpose in life improved by 0.250 standard deviations. Life satisfaction improved by 0.417 standard deviations. Expensive, intensive programs often produce effects of 0.1-0.2 SD. Getting 0.35-0.42 SD from “just” giving people money is remarkable. And the strongest effect was on autonomy—basic income gave people the feeling that they had more control over their lives, that their lives were “more valuable and meaningful.”

The German researchers concluded that basic income “functions as a resilience instrument.” It gives people the power to say no—to bad jobs, to exploitative conditions, to situations that harm their mental health. That power changes everything.

A systematic review published in Social Science & Medicine examined 38 studies of social security policy changes in high-income countries. Twenty-one studies looked at increases in social security generosity; seventeen looked at decreases. The pattern was unmistakable: policies that improve social security eligibility and generosity are associated with improvements in mental health. Policies that reduce eligibility and generosity are associated with worse mental health.

The evidence isn’t ambiguous. Give people more security, their mental health improves. Take security away, their mental health declines. The researchers also found that cuts to social security tend to increase mental health inequalities, while expansions have the opposite effect.

In Brazil, researchers studying the Bolsa Família program—covering half the Brazilian population over twelve years (over 114 million people)—found that cash transfer recipients had dramatically lower suicide rates: 5.5 per 100,000 compared to 11.1 per 100,000 among non-recipients. The monthly cash support was associated with approximately a 61% reduction in suicide risk. The effect was strongest among women (65% reduction) and individuals aged 25 to 59 (60% reduction).

We’re not talking about abstract well-being measures here. We’re talking about lives saved. These are thousands of real people who didn’t end their lives thanks to having cash support.

Some of the most compelling long-term evidence comes from North Carolina. In 1996, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians opened a casino and began distributing profits equally to all tribal members—a universal basic income for the community that continues to this day.

A Duke University study that was already tracking children’s mental health in the region suddenly became the longest-running observation of UBI’s effects. The results were remarkable: behavioral problems among children in families lifted out of poverty declined by 40%. Children who were youngest when payments began were a third less likely to develop substance abuse or psychiatric problems as teenagers. At ages 25 and 30, those who grew up with the basic income had a third of the anxiety and half the rates of depression compared to those who didn’t.

The casino dividends also improved the community’s social cohesion and self-determination. It wasn’t just individual mental health that improved—it was the fabric of the community itself. Economists have since tracked the costs of the annual dividend versus the savings in expenditures on crime and medical care. They find that by age 26, the benefits of the UBI exceeded its costs by a factor of three to one.

One of the most underappreciated findings from basic income research is how it strengthens community bonds—and how those stronger bonds contribute to better mental health. In the 150+ guaranteed basic income pilots conducted across the United States since 2020, researchers consistently find that participants use their time and resources to spend more time with friends, family, and neighbors.

In Namibia’s UBI pilot, researchers observed that “a stronger community spirit developed.” Begging had created barriers to normal social interaction—when everyone might ask you for money, you avoid social contact. Once basic income made begging unnecessary, people felt free to visit each other without being seen as wanting something in return. In India’s UBI pilot villages, traditionally separate castes began working together in ways that surprised even researchers.

We know from decades of research that social connection is the trump card for mental health. Basic income doesn’t just give people money—it gives them the time and security to invest in relationships. And those relationships support mental health in ways that compound over time.

Here’s where the mental health and social cohesion findings lead somewhere potentially unexpected: gun violence. The United States has one of the highest murder rates in the industrialized world—nearly three times more murders per capita than Canada and ten times more than Japan. What explains this (besides the guns)?

In 1998, Ichiro Kawachi at the Harvard School of Public Health led a landmark study investigating the factors driving American homicide rates. Using data from all 50 states measuring social capital (interpersonal trust that promotes cooperation), income inequality, poverty, unemployment, education levels, and alcohol consumption, the researchers identified which factors were most associated with violent crime.

The results were striking. Income inequality alone explained 74% of the variance in murder rates. But social capital had an even stronger association—by itself, it accounted for 82% of homicides. Other factors like unemployment, poverty, or education were only weakly associated. Social capital wasn’t just important—it was primary. As Kawachi concluded, when the ties that bind a community together are severed, inequality is allowed to run free, with deadly consequences.

What about guns themselves? In a follow-up study, Kawachi found that when social capital and community involvement declined, gun ownership increased. People who don’t trust their neighbors are more likely to think guns will provide security. In this way, both the number of guns and the number of homicides stem from the same root: eroded social capital. Address the root cause—rebuild trust and community bonds—and both problems may improve together.

This is where basic income enters the picture. Remember Finland’s finding: basic income recipients trusted other people and institutions more than the control group. Remember Namibia: a stronger community spirit developed. Remember India: castes began working together. Basic income doesn’t just improve individual mental health—it rebuilds the social fabric that protects communities from violence.

According to University of Washington sociologists (my alma mater), social activism—people working together for their community—is the single most important factor associated with reduced violence at the neighborhood, national, and individual levels. Universal basic income gives everyone the time and security to engage in exactly this kind of civic participation. It’s not just a mental health intervention. It’s a gun violence prevention intervention too.

The new Finland study makes something crystal clear that has been obscured for too long: the conditions we attach to welfare programs aren’t neutral features. They are active harms. The surveillance, the requirements, the constant need to prove worthiness—besides adding to administrative costs, these create psychological damage that persists even when the financial support is adequate.

We’ve spent decades debating how much money to give people, when we should have been asking whether we need to give it with so many strings attached. Finland gave both groups the same money. The group with fewer strings had 33% better mental health. That’s not a marginal improvement—that’s a transformation.

The evidence from Finland, Germany, Kenya, Brazil, North Carolina, Namibia, India, Canada, and dozens of American cities all points in the same direction: unconditional cash improves mental health. The unconditionality matters. The trust matters. Treating people like adults who can make their own decisions about their own lives—that matters.

The Canadian Mental Health Association has already officially endorsed basic income. So has the Canadian Medical Association. As the evidence continues to pile up, more health organizations will follow. The question is no longer whether basic income improves mental health—that question has been definitively answered. The question now is how long we’ll continue to ignore the answer.

Every day we delay implementing universal basic income, people suffer unnecessarily. They experience anxiety and depression that could be prevented. Their trust in society erodes, in turn eroding faith in democracy itself. Children grow up with chronic stress that shapes their brains and personalities in lasting ways. The science is in, and it’s unambiguous: universal basic income would be one of the most powerful mental health interventions humanity has ever devised.

Conditions are the problem. Trust is the solution. It’s time we started acting like it.

Note: This article discusses the mental health benefits of universal basic income based on multiple peer-reviewed studies and pilot programs. Individual experiences may vary, and basic income should be considered as one component of comprehensive mental health policy, not a replacement for necessary medical or psychological care.

If you enjoyed this article, please share it and click the subscribe button. Also consider making a monthly pledge in support of my work to have your name appear below.

Special thanks to my monthly patrons: Gisele Huff, dorothy krahn, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Bob Weishaar, Judith Bliss, Lowell Aronoff, Jessica Chew, Katie Moussouris, David Ruark, Tricia Garrett, A.W.R., Daryl Smith, Larry Cohen, John Steinberger, Philip Rosedale, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, Dylan Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Joanna Zarach, Mgmguy, Albert Wenger, Andrew Yang, Peter T Knight, Michael Finney, David Ihnen, Steve Roth, Miki Phagan, Walter Schaerer, Elizabeth Corker, Albert Daniel Brockman, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Arjun Banker, Tommy Caruso, Felix Ling, Jocelyn Hockings, Mark Donovan, Jason Clark, Chuck Cordes, Mark Broadgate, Leslie Kausch, Juro Antal, centuryfalcon64, Deanna McHugh, Stephen Castro-Starkey, David Allen, Liz, and all my other monthly patrons on Patreon for their support.