Hats off to you guys, well done!
Dvir Caspi
Karma: 129
I read now, well.. it’s a pretty cynical post. While there are obviously those books that give you false magical hopes for instant relief, and it’s fun to joke about them, I am not a fan of the cynical tone. Some people say cynicism is the opposite of hope, and I kinda agree. While it’s good to criticize, Mental health and health in general are supposed to be fields of hope. Obviously not false hope, but there are objective and subjective reasons for hope in treatment.
However, there are still some important points in the post which I am definitely noting down.
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).
Thank you for your comment. I would like to address your first point. While gov. funds do need a political push, and that societal change is trickier than thought, general innovation in Mental Health that could benefit society does not require any grand political change or push. There is meaningful innovation already both in non-profit and for-profit sectors. And your example of Gates’ funds that if he tries to directly fund health in general he will run out of money, it’s obviously true. But that doesn’t mean that careful capital couldn’t be allocated to promising health innovations for-profit and non-profit, similarly to many other fields.
Thank you, I will definitely definitely read.
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.
I like this post, a lot, thanks Richard!
I think you are addressing two things −
1. The first is something called “burnout”—in which you feel absolutely depleted and exhausted from your work. EAers are more prone to this, because you feel a lot of weight on your shoulders when you work on something that its success or failure could impact peoples lives. Even more prone are EAers that are activists, working on projects that do not enjoy common support—and even the opposite. I can share from my personal experience I had as an Animal Rights activist—people mocked us, degraded our work, etc. (and we were the friendliest ever). It tripled the burnout. I agree that creating content around how to manage (or even avoid) burnout is fantastic for the EA community. I think such work is described as “Meta-EA”. You gave me a great idea, to write a post about how to manage/avoid burnout! I will publish it in the forum in the upcoming weeks.
2. Improving the general MH (Mental Health) of EAers (regardless of Burnout) - this is also a “Meta-EA” topic. As someone who is studying Clinical Psychology I thought about it myself, just volunteering (in the future, when I’m licensed and all that) making myself available without any pay for EAers in my local community of EA Israel who are struggling, and could contact me for some initial consultancy. (It needs to be very, very well defined how exactly to do this—you don’t want to do more harm than good, but it’s possible).