There is still a lot of progress to be made in low-income country psychotherapy, which I think many EAs find counterintuitive. StrongMinds and Friendship Bench could both be about 5× cheaper, and have found ways to get substantially cheaper every year for the past half decade or so. At Kaya Guides, we’re exploring further improvements and should share more soon.
Plausibly, you could double cost-effectiveness again if it were possible to replace human counsellors with AI in a way that maintained retention (the jury is still out here).
The Happier Lives Institute has been looking at these kinds of interventions; their Promising Charities Pure Earth and Taimaka both appear to improve long-run mental health sustainably, by treating lead poisoning and malnutrition.
A few points:
There is still a lot of progress to be made in low-income country psychotherapy, which I think many EAs find counterintuitive. StrongMinds and Friendship Bench could both be about 5× cheaper, and have found ways to get substantially cheaper every year for the past half decade or so. At Kaya Guides, we’re exploring further improvements and should share more soon.
Plausibly, you could double cost-effectiveness again if it were possible to replace human counsellors with AI in a way that maintained retention (the jury is still out here).
The Happier Lives Institute has been looking at these kinds of interventions; their Promising Charities Pure Earth and Taimaka both appear to improve long-run mental health sustainably, by treating lead poisoning and malnutrition.