Courtesy Etanda Arden Etanda Arden says Ontario's basic income pilot project helped her feel like a better parent to her 13-year-old daughter, Tyler-Rose.

Etanda Arden's phone used to ring constantly with calls from bill collectors.

The single mother was studying full-time at Lakehead University, paying for rent and groceries with payments from the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP). She was behind by $300 every month, so she'd pay half her bills one month and half the next, never catching up.

Arden struggled with depression and anxiety.

"I found that it really affected me as a student and as a parent. I was always preoccupied, thinking about how we were going to maintain our life. And not wanting my kid to suffer either."

It just alleviates a lot of stress.Etanda Arden

Since being on Ontario's basic income pilot project, life is different.

"It just alleviates a lot of stress," Arden told HuffPost Canada by phone from Thunder Bay, Ont.

She said she feels like a better parent, too, now that she can afford extras like field trips for her 13-year-old daughter, Tyler-Rose.

Her experience is typical for people who enrolled in the basic income pilot, new data shows. Eighty-one per cent of participants reported moderate or severe "psychological distress," according to a survey obtained by a recipient.

The pilot gave no-strings-attached payments to people living on low incomes in exchange for their participation in a research study. Single people living on less than $34,000 were eligible for up to $16,989 a year and couples living on less than $48,000 were eligible for as much as $24,027 a year. People who are working will see that amount reduced by 50 per cent of their income.

Ontario's Progressive Conservative government announced in July that it would cancel the payments and the research. This baseline survey provides the first public information about the pilot's participants. It doesn't measure the effects of the program, but it sheds a light on who signed up. The introductory survey was completed by 5,077 participants in December 2017.

Watch HuffPost Canada's video series on the basic income project: