yes, it’s interesting that schizophrenia tops the list anyway, although this could be the case in virtue of the face it stops you from leading a normal life part of the disability (this being based on the EQ-5D), rather than because severe schiozophrenics are less happy than severely depressed people.
although they are weighted highly, that doesn’t stop them from being underweighted. Given the way DALYs are constructed—measuring health, not happiness; using preferences, not adaptation—it’s conceptually very hard to see how mental health conditions can’t be underweighted in terms of happiness. Unless and until we measure people’s experiences of various diseases we really won’t know.
My guess is that depression could be the most comparatively underweighted health state: if you can function normally, but you’re just really sad, you might do pretty well on an EQ-5D metric because you’re only doing badly in 1 of 5 criteria, and that’s the criteria most linked to happiness.
As an aside, do you know how the GBD project takes episode duration into account? Or is it just a measure of intensity?
yes, it’s interesting that schizophrenia tops the list anyway, although this could be the case in virtue of the face it stops you from leading a normal life part of the disability (this being based on the EQ-5D), rather than because severe schiozophrenics are less happy than severely depressed people.
although they are weighted highly, that doesn’t stop them from being underweighted. Given the way DALYs are constructed—measuring health, not happiness; using preferences, not adaptation—it’s conceptually very hard to see how mental health conditions can’t be underweighted in terms of happiness. Unless and until we measure people’s experiences of various diseases we really won’t know.
My guess is that depression could be the most comparatively underweighted health state: if you can function normally, but you’re just really sad, you might do pretty well on an EQ-5D metric because you’re only doing badly in 1 of 5 criteria, and that’s the criteria most linked to happiness.
As an aside, do you know how the GBD project takes episode duration into account? Or is it just a measure of intensity?