I tend to assume that the physical health interventions we promote via global health initiatives are also the most tractable ways to improve mental health. Losing a child to malaria, or suffering anemia due to a worm infection, or being extremely poor, or living and dying through wars and plagues, seem like they’d have a devastating impact on people’s mental health.
Because EAs don’t typically suffer from these problems, and because we allow for a lot of self-care, it does not surprise me that EAs focus on specifically mental health interventions for themselves. This can smack of “for me but not for thee,” but I read it as “I expect that therapy will do me more good than bednets, and bednets will do you more good than therapy.”
If that’s false, it might be useful to promote the counter argument to that more loudly. I expect you’ve researched it deeply, given your work, and so it might just be a matter of promoting that research more vigorously.
What follows is mere speculation on my part.
I tend to assume that the physical health interventions we promote via global health initiatives are also the most tractable ways to improve mental health. Losing a child to malaria, or suffering anemia due to a worm infection, or being extremely poor, or living and dying through wars and plagues, seem like they’d have a devastating impact on people’s mental health.
Because EAs don’t typically suffer from these problems, and because we allow for a lot of self-care, it does not surprise me that EAs focus on specifically mental health interventions for themselves. This can smack of “for me but not for thee,” but I read it as “I expect that therapy will do me more good than bednets, and bednets will do you more good than therapy.”
If that’s false, it might be useful to promote the counter argument to that more loudly. I expect you’ve researched it deeply, given your work, and so it might just be a matter of promoting that research more vigorously.