Financial advisors who regularly meet with clients face to face can sometimes tell when a formerly sharp and thoughtful client is starting to slip mentally. The clients can show signs in their speech and body language.

But is it possible to tell in somebody’s e-mail? Or in a text?

The research suggests it is. In some cases, texts and e-mails can show signs of possible thinking disorders, says Daniel Marson, a neuropsychologist with the University of Alabama at Birmingham and president of the National Academy of Neuropsychology.

Studies have shown that people with mild cognitive impairment will make four times as many financial errors as people who aren’t impaired. And that can be an issue as boomer clients age. And as advisors increasingly communicate with clients through phone calls, text and e-mail, they’ll need to rethink the way they spot a client in danger of declining mental faculties.

Say that a client who is characteristically calm in meetings begins sending argumentative, expletive-filled e-mails or correspondence in which he suddenly shows a preference for high-risk investments. That could be legitimate grounds for concern, Marson says.

Advisors should also watch out for a client who repeats questions, which could indicate memory loss, and pay attention to changes in a client’s cadence and word choice in electronic dispatches.

These changes might accompany dramatic events in the clients’ lives, says William Perry, executive director of the National Academy of Neuropsychology. A death in the family might put the advisor on alert, or a client’s odd behavior—say, when an octogenarian man divorces his wife to marry a young woman.

“People often experience life events and don’t realize how deeply they impact them,” Perry says, adding that e-mails and texts hinting at suspicious behavior are worth following up on with a phone call.

Joshua Klein, an assistant professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, says that repeated messages that don’t make sense can signal that a client has lost the ability to think and express him or herself clearly.

But Alzheimer’s disease poses a different problem. People who have Alzheimer’s in its early stages might lose their ability to make appropriate financial decisions but not have problems with language.

As electronic messaging has become the new normal, it has given birth to a new diagnosis––“dystextia,” aberrant texting that signals a stroke.  
For advisors, being clued in to these cues is yet another way they can be of service to their clients.
––Ted Knutson