1) Yeah, I never thought the numbers were that robust. More good measurement needed!
2) Thanks for this, will check this out soon.
3) Thanks
4). By being 10-18 times worse than we think, I mean anxiety/depression may cause about 10-18 more suffering than people expect them compared to other health conditions.
This is from the the Dolan and Metcalfe paper: they show people are prepared to trade off 15% of life to remove ‘some difficulty walking’ and ‘moderate anxiety or depression’, but that people with ‘moderate anxiety or depression’ report 10x the reduction in life satisfaction that those with ‘some difficulty walking’ do, and 18x reduction in terms of daily effect (their measure for what we might call ‘happiness’).
In other words, the average person imagines walking with a limp would be bad as moderate depression (as inferred from trade offs), but actually the depression would be much worse for their happiness than the limp. This is explained by the focusing illusion and the non-adaptation stuff.
If you look at the other numbers in the Dolan and Metcalfe paper, they show ‘self care’ and ‘usual activities’ are equally over-rated when people the trade-offs compared to how much they effect happiness.
In terms of weighting, my thought is that if we constructed well-being adjusted life years (WELBYs) depression would be 10-ish times worse than walking with a limb, but this would be rescaled. So if depression has a WELBY weight of 0.8 (e.g. 1 year with depression is worth 0.2 years of happy life), then minor mobility issues have a WELBY weight of 0.08 or something. I would not suggest all cases of mental health should be understood as being many times worse than death! I don’t think I implied that anyway, but I would clarify that in future.
The overall thought is more like: daily life with depression is quite bad in terms of happiness, health conditions which don’t cause depression (or pain) at all (or for very long) are probably not nearly as bad as we imagine they are, and we should re-prioritise bearing this in mind. Non-depression mental health disorders may also turn out to be much worse than we expect, and maybe also worse than most physical health conditions. This is all a bit broad (“what does ‘most physical health conditions mean?’”) but I hope you get the point.
1) Yeah, I never thought the numbers were that robust. More good measurement needed!
2) Thanks for this, will check this out soon.
3) Thanks
4). By being 10-18 times worse than we think, I mean anxiety/depression may cause about 10-18 more suffering than people expect them compared to other health conditions.
This is from the the Dolan and Metcalfe paper: they show people are prepared to trade off 15% of life to remove ‘some difficulty walking’ and ‘moderate anxiety or depression’, but that people with ‘moderate anxiety or depression’ report 10x the reduction in life satisfaction that those with ‘some difficulty walking’ do, and 18x reduction in terms of daily effect (their measure for what we might call ‘happiness’).
In other words, the average person imagines walking with a limp would be bad as moderate depression (as inferred from trade offs), but actually the depression would be much worse for their happiness than the limp. This is explained by the focusing illusion and the non-adaptation stuff.
If you look at the other numbers in the Dolan and Metcalfe paper, they show ‘self care’ and ‘usual activities’ are equally over-rated when people the trade-offs compared to how much they effect happiness.
In terms of weighting, my thought is that if we constructed well-being adjusted life years (WELBYs) depression would be 10-ish times worse than walking with a limb, but this would be rescaled. So if depression has a WELBY weight of 0.8 (e.g. 1 year with depression is worth 0.2 years of happy life), then minor mobility issues have a WELBY weight of 0.08 or something. I would not suggest all cases of mental health should be understood as being many times worse than death! I don’t think I implied that anyway, but I would clarify that in future.
The overall thought is more like: daily life with depression is quite bad in terms of happiness, health conditions which don’t cause depression (or pain) at all (or for very long) are probably not nearly as bad as we imagine they are, and we should re-prioritise bearing this in mind. Non-depression mental health disorders may also turn out to be much worse than we expect, and maybe also worse than most physical health conditions. This is all a bit broad (“what does ‘most physical health conditions mean?’”) but I hope you get the point.