Financial Incentives, Health Screening, and Selection into Mental Health Care: Experimental Evidence from College Students in India

In an RCT with college students in Chennai (N=340), we test how modest financial incentives and personalized feedback affect the uptake and targeting (by symptom severity) of free therapy. Despite 56% of students screening positive for at least mild depression or anxiety, only 3% in the control group took up therapy. A small cash incentive increased appointments by 9 percentage points (p = 0.06) on average without substantially affecting targeting. Personalized feedback and recommendations based on a mental health screening tool significantly improved targeting while keeping overall take-up largely unchanged. Combining these two treatments achieved both higher take-up and improved targeting, by increasing appointments among symptomatic individuals by 21 pp (p < 0.01) without affecting uptake by asymptomatic individuals. These findings suggest that low-cost incentives coupled with screening information can effectively increase uptake while allocating limited mental health care resources to those with greater need.