Effective Mental Health

/ Our Purpose / Team / Working Groups / Cause area /

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The purpose of the EMH initative

Since early 2023, we’ve been meeting regularly to co-ordinate and define our goals. We’ve facilitated 3 online community meetings so far, with 100+ attendees.

Our goal is to foster collaboration within the EA mental health community. Many organizations, groups, and individuals are working to improve mental health globally and within the EA community specifically, but there’s a lack of awareness and connection between them. We want to create a more highly integrated network to coordinate related efforts, aiming to identify and implement cost-effective interventions to improve wellbeing at scale. 

Both creating spaces and tools for community members to get connected to the mental health resources that will support their own well-being, and learn what is happening and how to get involved in the mental health space.

1. Intermediate goals:
Clarify what EA MH-interested people want
Clarify what EA MH orgs want

1a. In order to: (act as match-maker)
MH EAs ↔ MH EAs
MH EAs ↔ MH EA orgs
MH EA orgs ↔ MH EA orgs

1b Provide a platform for effective MH

2 Make EA more MH (advocate for the cause area)

3 Make MH more effective (promote what actually works)

Example Resources we are exploring (tailored to high-impact interventions people are interested in pursuing in the community):

• Better data collection, 
• MEL support (could also help non-EA mental health orgs become more EA), 
• Effective ways to present the project in a way that it will align with governments’ mandates and needs,
• Resources for therapists to effectively measure their impact (this is not a standard thing even in first-world countries),
• Summary of research outputs on AI therapy (sharing what’s effective or not and how to monitor) with EAs, recommendations for scaling to people in need (AIMHI)

Examples of how we plan to measurement are progress

• How many people engage with outputs and the outputs themselves (quality of projects like how many existing project leaders they consulted to create the solution / advice / resource,
• How evidence-based is the research they outputted + degree of change based on resources used,
• *resuse the measure of change from the Mission Motor, estimate of added impact from the change)

Feedback

We are still updating and adding to this website; and will continue to improve it going forward.

This project is a work in progress, please comment if you know of organizations or resources that aren’t already listed or if you know of any updates to the ones we have listed. We would love to hear your input! 

If you have any insights, ideas or expertise to share, or would like to provide feedback on our current plans, please reach out to us here.

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The Team

Co-ordinating Team Leads

Mark Rootenberg	Zoé Roy-Stang	Emily Budd	James Brown	Damin Curtis

Gina Hafez

Neha Joshi

We have created a Linkedin group; which we will use to create a self-updating community networking space – connecting people working in this field; funders; founders, collaborators and volunteers etc.

Please email us if you have already interacted with us and would like to be part of it.

We plan, in the near future, to add featured profiles of key people of interest, working in, funding, or highly influencing this cause area.

Teams at EMH

1. The purpose of the EMH initative
   1. Feedback
2. The Team
   1. Co-ordinating Team Leads
   2. Teams at EMH
   3. Coordination Team
      1. Purpose
      2. Join Us
      3. Purpose
      4. Point Person
      5. Join Us
   4. Newsletter Team
      1. Purpose
      2. Point Person
   5. Join Us
   6. Website Team
      1. Purpose
      2. Point Person
   7. Partnerships
      1. Purpose
      2. Point Person
      3. Join Us
   8. Point People
3. Working Groups
   1. EA Therapists
   2. EA Coaches & Therapists
   3. AI Mental Health Initiative
   4. Fellowship for Global MH
   5. LMIC Mental Health
4. Cause Area Mental Health
   1. Further detail

Point People

Point person for funding inquiries:
Peter Brietbart
Happier Lives Institute (HLI)
Bloom Wellbeing Fund (BWF)
Mental Health Funding Circle (MHFC)

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To inquire about and join any of these groups, please email us

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Cause Area Mental Health

Mental health issues cause an enormous amount of suffering on a global scale, and could be just as promising a target for charitable intervention as many other effective altruist cause areas.

EA forum –
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/topics/mental-health-cause-area

Further detail

Mental health problems are conditions such as depression, anxiety and schizophrenia. It is unclear precisely what percent of the DALY burden worldwide they represent. While some research has indicated they make up about 7% of the worldwide DALY burden, other researchers have suggested that the 7% figure may underestimate the true burden of mental health in a variety of ways, and that the actual figure may be nearly double that.^[1]

Mental health problems are typically neglected, particularly in the developing world, and there are very few charities working in the area. Giving What We Can conducted an evaluation of Basic Needs, a charity that implements community-based mental health projects, concluding that it was promising but not as cost-effective as GiveWell ’s recommended charities.^[2]

Some people care about making everyone happier and more satisfied with their life, over and above treating medical disorders. A few members of the effective altruism community have argued that interventions aimed at increasing happiness may be more cost-effective than global poverty interventions.^[3]

Here is a link to an interesting post from Michael Plant going into some detail on his assessment of why Mental Health is such an important cause area to focus on –

https://www.plantinghappiness.co.uk/cause-profile-mental-health/

I argue that mental illness may be one of the world’s most pressing problems.

Here is a summary of the key points:I argue that mental illness may be one of the world’s most pressing problems.

Here is a summary of the key points:

While mental health has the most obvious appeal for those who believe we ought to be maximising the happiness of people alive today, I explain that belief isn’t necessary to conclude it is of the highest priority: someone could, in principle, value what happens to all possible sentient life and still reasonably decide this cause is where they’ll do the most good. I raise, but do not seek to resolve, the many crucial considerations here.

Not only does mental illness seem to cause as much, if not more, total worldwide unhappiness than global poverty, it also seems far more neglected.

Effective mental health interventions exist currently. These have been improving over time and we can expect further improvements.

I estimate the cost-effectiveness of a particular mental health organisation, StrongMinds, and claim it is (at least) four times more effective per dollar than GiveDirectly, a GiveWell recommended top charity. This assumes we understand cost-effectiveness in terms of happiness, as measured by self-reported life satisfaction.

I explain why it’s unclear if StrongMinds is better than all the other GiveWell recommended life-improving charities (due to inconsistent evidence regarding negative spillovers from wealth increases) and life-saving charities (due to methodological issues about where on a 0-10 life satisfaction scale is the ‘neutral point’ equivalent to being dead).

I make some initial suggestions for the highest-impact careers, as well as alternative donation opportunities. No thorough analysis has yet been done to compare these.

And this from probablygood.org Struggles with mental health affect close to a billion people around the world, but receive far less attention and support than other global health issues, especially in low-income regions. Conditions like depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia can deeply disrupt daily life, even if their effects aren’t always visible. Mental illness is a leading contributor to suffering and lost well-being, surpassing even poverty and physical illness according to the World Happiness Report. In 2019 alone, mental disorders caused the loss of over 125 million years of healthy life, which is nearly half the burden of cancer. What can we do about it? The road to improving mental health is complex, but there arepromising solutions. While therapy and medication can be highly effective, they’re often expensive and inaccessible, especially in low-income settings.That’s why it’s exciting to see organizations like Kaya Guides, Vida Plena, and StrongMinds are developing approaches designed to scale. These include self-guided mental health tools and group-based programs that can reach far more people at lower cost. For instance, StrongMinds delivers group therapy for women in sub-Saharan Africa, while Kaya Guides offers structured mental health support via WhatsApp. If you’re interested in working on mental health as a cause area, supporting these kinds of scalable and accessible approaches could be a powerful way to make a difference, whether through funding, policy advocacy, or direct work in the field. For a deeper dive, check out our full impact-focused overview of mental health.