Hi all,
I’ve been engaged with the local EA community for some time now and I think it’s time I can start contributing. I did some personal research for my donation allocation with focus on mental health and summed it up in a post I shared with the local community.
I intended the post about mental health to be practical, from a small donor’s perspective, and I think it can be valuable for the broader EA community as well. I don’t have enough Karma for full post, therefore I link it from here: Mental Health From the Perspective of a Small Donor in 2018
What do you think about it? Is it the kind of material you would find useful here on EA forum and would you like more posts like these?
Here’s an executive summary of the post:
Mental health is an important cause area that very well passes all the importance, neglectedness, and tractability criteria. It has been argued that we should focus on it even more than on some currently popular EA topics, especially if our goal is increasing “happiness” or life satisfaction.
Mental health is the biggest predictor of “misery”, or the bottom 10% in terms of life satisfaction, more than poverty or physical illness. Depression alone affects around 10% of the population globally. Depression and anxiety account for 2.9% of the global DALY burden (malaria accounts for 2.7% and DALYs probably underestimate mental health). It is neglected both by the international donor community and in national health budgets, especially in developing countries.
Solutions to the problem and topics for further research are known. From the perspective of a small donor, the most effective known recipient is StrongMinds. It offers group psychotherapy treatments to women in Africa, its model scales well, and Founders Pledge estimates its effectiveness at $220/DALY.
After the investigation of the cause area, I personally decided to donate some of my resources to StrongMinds this season.
It’s hard to tell from your summary whether your post would be a good fit for the forum. It would be easier if you said what kind of methods you used to investigate the mental health cause area. For example, did you read several EA documents and summarize them? Did you read the websites of several charities? Something else?
I’m glad you’re going to be getting involved online!
Hi Khorton,
yes, it is a summary from several EA sources (more details are in the linked article).
The main value of the article is in compiling them to be actionable for a small donor: It argues the cause passes the importance/neglectedness/tractability criteria, compares impact and cost-effectiveness with malaria treatment, and suggests a donation recipient (StrongMinds) with discussion of other options.
I know I’ve seen arguments for mental health as a cause area on the Forum before, using the INT framework. You might want to do a quick search to confirm whether your key arguments have been well-represented on here.
Hi all, I’ve been engaged with the local EA community for some time now and I think it’s time I can start contributing. I did some personal research for my donation allocation with focus on mental health and summed it up in a post I shared with the local community.
I intended the post about mental health to be practical, from a small donor’s perspective, and I think it can be valuable for the broader EA community as well. I don’t have enough Karma for full post, therefore I link it from here: Mental Health From the Perspective of a Small Donor in 2018
What do you think about it? Is it the kind of material you would find useful here on EA forum and would you like more posts like these?
Here’s an executive summary of the post:
Hi mifeet, welcome to the Forum!
It’s hard to tell from your summary whether your post would be a good fit for the forum. It would be easier if you said what kind of methods you used to investigate the mental health cause area. For example, did you read several EA documents and summarize them? Did you read the websites of several charities? Something else?
I’m glad you’re going to be getting involved online!
Hi Khorton, yes, it is a summary from several EA sources (more details are in the linked article).
The main value of the article is in compiling them to be actionable for a small donor: It argues the cause passes the importance/neglectedness/tractability criteria, compares impact and cost-effectiveness with malaria treatment, and suggests a donation recipient (StrongMinds) with discussion of other options.
I know I’ve seen arguments for mental health as a cause area on the Forum before, using the INT framework. You might want to do a quick search to confirm whether your key arguments have been well-represented on here.