We are happy to announce that we have finally finished and published an 8-week-long mental health programme for EAs on Mental Health Navigator.
The whole programme is composed of the following topics:
Introduction to Mindfulness and Emotions
Self-Compassion
Widening the Circles of Compassion
Relating to Others
Imposter Syndrome
Sustainable Motivation and Preventing Burnout
Creating a Healthy Community
Introduction to Well-being and Behavioral Change
How to use this programme?
The format of the programme is very similar to the EA Fellowship. Each week focuses on one topic/workshop. It is also possible to run the workshops individually. Prior to the workshop, the participants are asked to read one chapter of the workbook that corresponds to the workshop’s topic.
The workshops are run by facilitators. The facilitators do not have to be mental health specialists, as this programme is not meant to serve as an intervention. It is more about opening the topic, creating a safe space to talk about mental health issues in the community, and enabling peer-to-peer support in the search for well-being and work-life balance.
If you are interested, you can find more information about the programme, its liability, and safety on Mental Health Navigator.
What are the lessons learned that we gained from designing and testing the programme?
(Given the nature and size of the project, we evaluated all the workshops as well as the pilot programme mainly qualitatively via focus groups and in-depth interviews).
First, designing and testing the workshop supported our original hypothesis that there is a demand for activities supporting mental health in the EA community; opening the topic via this project seemed like a good first step. We had many EA members subscribed to our newsletter (around 100 people in total) and have received positive feedback from the participants of the workshops. We were invited to run the workshops at the CARE conference or for the Stanford Existential Risks Initiative. We are currently in contact with different local organisers interested in facilitating the programme in their groups.
Second, it seems that programmes that create space for peer support and target problems prevalent in the community are promising. Indeed, one of the most valuable things of the programme was to enable like-minded people to share and support each other. Being an effective altruist might be challenging in many ways; social support and a safe environment seem to be powerful tools for overcoming these challenges. Thus, we conclude that putting effort into creating materials and activities to support mental health in the community is worth investing our resources in, and we would like to encourage others to focus on that. Given the time we had and the complexity such a project presents, there are surely still improvements to be made. We would be very grateful if it served as a starting point from which others could continue.
The 8-week mental health programme for EAs finally published
We are happy to announce that we have finally finished and published an 8-week-long mental health programme for EAs on Mental Health Navigator.
The whole programme is composed of the following topics:
Introduction to Mindfulness and Emotions
Self-Compassion
Widening the Circles of Compassion
Relating to Others
Imposter Syndrome
Sustainable Motivation and Preventing Burnout
Creating a Healthy Community
Introduction to Well-being and Behavioral Change
How to use this programme?
The format of the programme is very similar to the EA Fellowship. Each week focuses on one topic/workshop. It is also possible to run the workshops individually. Prior to the workshop, the participants are asked to read one chapter of the workbook that corresponds to the workshop’s topic.
The workshops are run by facilitators. The facilitators do not have to be mental health specialists, as this programme is not meant to serve as an intervention. It is more about opening the topic, creating a safe space to talk about mental health issues in the community, and enabling peer-to-peer support in the search for well-being and work-life balance.
If you are interested, you can find more information about the programme, its liability, and safety on Mental Health Navigator.
What are the lessons learned that we gained from designing and testing the programme?
(Given the nature and size of the project, we evaluated all the workshops as well as the pilot programme mainly qualitatively via focus groups and in-depth interviews).
First, designing and testing the workshop supported our original hypothesis that there is a demand for activities supporting mental health in the EA community; opening the topic via this project seemed like a good first step. We had many EA members subscribed to our newsletter (around 100 people in total) and have received positive feedback from the participants of the workshops. We were invited to run the workshops at the CARE conference or for the Stanford Existential Risks Initiative. We are currently in contact with different local organisers interested in facilitating the programme in their groups.
Second, it seems that programmes that create space for peer support and target problems prevalent in the community are promising. Indeed, one of the most valuable things of the programme was to enable like-minded people to share and support each other. Being an effective altruist might be challenging in many ways; social support and a safe environment seem to be powerful tools for overcoming these challenges. Thus, we conclude that putting effort into creating materials and activities to support mental health in the community is worth investing our resources in, and we would like to encourage others to focus on that. Given the time we had and the complexity such a project presents, there are surely still improvements to be made. We would be very grateful if it served as a starting point from which others could continue.