Hey @Dvir, mental health is a (not-professional) passion of mine so I am grateful for any attention given to it in EA. I wonder if you think a version 2.0 of your pitch can be written, which takes into account the 3 criteria below. Right now you seem to have nailed down the 1st, but I don’t see the case for 2 & 3:
Great in scale (it affects many lives, by a great amount)
Highly neglected (few other people are working on addressing the problem)
Hi Uri, thanks for your reply. :) While Mental Health is neglected in terms of government funds, it is not neglected at all in terms of the number of people who are interested in this field. Many are. So by this criteria it doesn’t line up with the EA mindset. Regarding the highly solvable or tractable, I think this is very challenging to evaluate.. But this could and should be a further discussion. Regarding the Happier Lives Institute, I have read some of their posts and reports, but admit that I am not familiar enough. Mental Health Innovation Network is also a great organization in this space.
From a broad enough perspective no cause area EA deals with is neglected. Poverty? Billions donated annually. AI? Every other start up uses it. So we start narrowing it down: poverty → malaria-> bednets.
There is every reason to believe mental health has neglected yet tractable and highly impactful areas, because of the size of the problem as you outline it, and because mental health touches all of us all the time in everything we do (when by health we don’t just mean the absence of disease but the maximization of wellbeing).
I think EA concepts are here to challenge us. Being a clinical psychiatrist is amazing, you can probably help hundreds of people. Could you do more? What’s going on in other parts of the globe, where is humanity headed towards in the future? This challenge does not have to be burdensome, it can be inspiring. It should certainly not paralyze you and prevent you from doing any good at all. Like a mathematician obsessed with proving a theorem, or a physicist relentlessly searching for the theory of everything, they also do other work, but never give up the challenge.
That’s a great perspective, appreciate it!! Inspires me. Tiny side note—clinical psychologist not psychiatrist (psychiatrists are also in mental health, but are medical doctors, and can prescribe medications).
Hey @Dvir, mental health is a (not-professional) passion of mine so I am grateful for any attention given to it in EA. I wonder if you think a version 2.0 of your pitch can be written, which takes into account the 3 criteria below. Right now you seem to have nailed down the 1st, but I don’t see the case for 2 & 3:
Great in scale (it affects many lives, by a great amount)
Highly neglected (few other people are working on addressing the problem)
Highly solvable or tractable (additional resources will do a great deal to address it) (https://80000hours.org/articles/problem-framework/)
I think that is what HLI is trying to do: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/uzLRw7cjpKnsuM7c3/hli-s-mental-health-programme-evaluation-project-update-on https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/v5n6eP4ZNr7ZSgEbT/jasper-synowski-and-clare-donaldson-identifying-the-most
Hi Uri, thanks for your reply. :)
While Mental Health is neglected in terms of government funds, it is not neglected at all in terms of the number of people who are interested in this field. Many are. So by this criteria it doesn’t line up with the EA mindset.
Regarding the highly solvable or tractable, I think this is very challenging to evaluate.. But this could and should be a further discussion.
Regarding the Happier Lives Institute, I have read some of their posts and reports, but admit that I am not familiar enough. Mental Health Innovation Network is also a great organization in this space.
From a broad enough perspective no cause area EA deals with is neglected. Poverty? Billions donated annually. AI? Every other start up uses it. So we start narrowing it down: poverty → malaria-> bednets.
There is every reason to believe mental health has neglected yet tractable and highly impactful areas, because of the size of the problem as you outline it, and because mental health touches all of us all the time in everything we do (when by health we don’t just mean the absence of disease but the maximization of wellbeing).
I think EA concepts are here to challenge us. Being a clinical psychiatrist is amazing, you can probably help hundreds of people. Could you do more? What’s going on in other parts of the globe, where is humanity headed towards in the future? This challenge does not have to be burdensome, it can be inspiring. It should certainly not paralyze you and prevent you from doing any good at all. Like a mathematician obsessed with proving a theorem, or a physicist relentlessly searching for the theory of everything, they also do other work, but never give up the challenge.
That’s a great perspective, appreciate it!! Inspires me.
Tiny side note—clinical psychologist not psychiatrist (psychiatrists are also in mental health, but are medical doctors, and can prescribe medications).