There are more citizens with unpayable debts than ever. And yet professionals in debt services often do not know how they can best, and most rapidly, get these families back on track. The impact of financial problems is great: lengthier use of benefit payments, a higher sickness absence rate at work, worse relationships with family and friends, increasing psychological and physical complaints and a greater chance of recidivism in the event of criminality. Through paying off debts, not only is the wellbeing of the debtor promoted, but society too is spared the future costs. Knowledge and insight into the working of the brain make it possible to develop better, more effective approaches.
Although homelessness is inherently associated with social exclusion, homeless individuals are rarely included in conventional studies on social exclusion. Use of longitudinal survey data from a cohort study on homeless people in four major Dutch cities (n = 378) allowed to examine: changes in indicators of social exclusion among homeless people over a 2.5-year period after reporting to the social relief system, and associations between changes in indicators of social exclusion and changes in psychological distress. Multinomial logistic regression analysis was applied to investigate the associations between changes in indicators of social exclusion and changes in psychological distress. Improvements were found in various indicators of social exclusion, whereas financial debts showed no significant improvement. Changes in unmet care needs, health insurance, social support from family and relatedness to others were related to changes in psychological distress. This study demonstrated improvements in various indicators of social exclusion among homeless people over a period of 2.5 years, and sheds light on the concept of social exclusion in relation to homelessness.
Original sin is only a poor stimulator of behaviour change. It's easy to understand that it seems rather unfair to blame a new-born for the major problems that humanity faces after several centuries of technological progress. That also applies to all those natural peoples, who lived in harmony with their environment, where the concept of Earth Overshoot Day did not apply at all. In this article it is argued that insights from applied psychology can help to pay off the debts in terms of behavioral change.
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