Plot the ratio of sufferers to RCTs for the top 10 psychological problems and you get this:
I lied. You actually get this:
The most neglected condition is 1000x more neglected than all of the others combined. I used number of RCTs, but no matter the metric, the picture is the same:
No charities are dedicated to overcoming it
Health services and insurance providers won’t cover it
Sufferers overwhelmingly cover it up and try to fix it themselves. Almost all fail—the symptoms make self-treatment intractable.
It sucks for so many
Condition-X affects 20% of adults. Compared to age-matched peers, sufferers end up with 20% lower income, 50% fewer promotions and 150% more unemployment. Your boss won’t tolerate it for long and would never have hired you had they known you had it (and that’d be 100% legal). But, if you showed up to a doctor’s office they’d laugh you out the door. While it responds to medication and therapy, condition-X doesn’t entitle you to sympathy or care afforded to people with “real” health problems.
Ironically, if they knew, your boss could help you control it better than your therapist and your doctor combined. Even then though, the moment you arrive home the symptoms would resurface. Little wonder suffering secretly is the dominant strategy.
It affects EAs particularly. Based on how badly they want a remedy, EAs voted to rank ~50 mental health problems that they personally suffer from. Condition-X came third.
The most depressing thing is how little intervention is needed
A recent RCT showed that 3 hours of specialised coaching over four weeks led to insane results. Of 117 participants, ~68% entered “full remission”. On average, they went from the 90th percentile of severity to perfectly normal.
This had a huge impact on their happiness: on average, 1.7 points higher on a 0–10 scale!
Of course, one study shouldn’t get you too excited. The usual questions apply: Do similar studies replicate this? Do results last? Would it work for you, a weirdo EA, who doesn’t remotely resemble the average RCT participant?
The answers are unusually encouraging. Results align with the broader literature and the pilot that inspired this RCT. At one-month follow-up, effects were actually stronger than immediately post-intervention (a similar study showed no loss of efficacy at 12 months later). And the participant pool skews heavily EA: 100% of the pilot and a third of the full RCT.
I must confess—it’s my own organisation’s intervention—so I’m kinda biased, but the Infrastructure Fund liked it enough to fully-fund treatment access for 200 condition-X afflicted EAs—same intervention, same organisation, same coach selection / training. This post is how those places will be distributed. Every element, from the clickbait title to the “condition-x” retention bait, was designed to selectively suck affected EAs to this call-to-action:
To learn how badly you’re affected, and what condition-X is, answer the 1 minute anonymous psychometric assessment. No sign-up needed, the results appear instantly, and you’ll potentially be offered one of those 200 free places. Click here to begin, or don’t. You could always just do it tomorrow.
200 fully-funded interventions for EAs with Condition-X
Plot the ratio of sufferers to RCTs for the top 10 psychological problems and you get this:
I lied. You actually get this:
The most neglected condition is 1000x more neglected than all of the others combined. I used number of RCTs, but no matter the metric, the picture is the same:
No charities are dedicated to overcoming it
Health services and insurance providers won’t cover it
Sufferers overwhelmingly cover it up and try to fix it themselves. Almost all fail—the symptoms make self-treatment intractable.
It sucks for so many
Condition-X affects 20% of adults. Compared to age-matched peers, sufferers end up with 20% lower income, 50% fewer promotions and 150% more unemployment. Your boss won’t tolerate it for long and would never have hired you had they known you had it (and that’d be 100% legal). But, if you showed up to a doctor’s office they’d laugh you out the door. While it responds to medication and therapy, condition-X doesn’t entitle you to sympathy or care afforded to people with “real” health problems.
Ironically, if they knew, your boss could help you control it better than your therapist and your doctor combined. Even then though, the moment you arrive home the symptoms would resurface. Little wonder suffering secretly is the dominant strategy.
It affects EAs particularly. Based on how badly they want a remedy, EAs voted to rank ~50 mental health problems that they personally suffer from. Condition-X came third.
The most depressing thing is how little intervention is needed
A recent RCT showed that 3 hours of specialised coaching over four weeks led to insane results. Of 117 participants, ~68% entered “full remission”. On average, they went from the 90th percentile of severity to perfectly normal.
This had a huge impact on their happiness: on average, 1.7 points higher on a 0–10 scale!
Of course, one study shouldn’t get you too excited. The usual questions apply: Do similar studies replicate this? Do results last? Would it work for you, a weirdo EA, who doesn’t remotely resemble the average RCT participant?
The answers are unusually encouraging. Results align with the broader literature and the pilot that inspired this RCT. At one-month follow-up, effects were actually stronger than immediately post-intervention (a similar study showed no loss of efficacy at 12 months later). And the participant pool skews heavily EA: 100% of the pilot and a third of the full RCT.
I must confess—it’s my own organisation’s intervention—so I’m kinda biased, but the Infrastructure Fund liked it enough to fully-fund treatment access for 200 condition-X afflicted EAs—same intervention, same organisation, same coach selection / training. This post is how those places will be distributed. Every element, from the clickbait title to the “condition-x” retention bait, was designed to selectively suck affected EAs to this call-to-action:
To learn how badly you’re affected, and what condition-X is, answer the 1 minute anonymous psychometric assessment. No sign-up needed, the results appear instantly, and you’ll potentially be offered one of those 200 free places. Click here to begin, or don’t. You could always just do it tomorrow.