NAMI Ask the Expert: Ask Us About Money- Financial Wellness to Enhance Recovery

Course overview

This course, based on the Ask the Expert webinar series by NAMI, presents a recovery-oriented approach to financial wellness that integrates peer support with practical money-management skills (budgeting, saving, banking, understanding credit/debt) to reduce financial stress and support mental health recovery. Presenters describe a six-session "Building Financial Wellness" curriculum, highlight common spending triggers, and demonstrate goal-setting and follow-up "booster" supports that reinforce behavior change. Learners explore how the financial dimension of wellness interacts with emotional, social, physical, and other wellness domains and how strengthening financial skills can enhance overall recovery and functioning. Emerging empirical evidence, including a recent randomized controlled trial, supports improvements in financial well-being and reduced financial distress among adults receiving mental health services. The course, with an intended audience of social workers, psychologists, marriage and family therapists, and counselors, then presents concrete, skills-based strategies and peer-delivered tools that can be integrated into routine clinical practice and care coordination to address financial stressors linked to anxiety, depression, and relapse risk.