The EA mindset of focusing on doing the most good can exacerbate mental health issues (particularly self-esteem, guilt, and insecurity). It seems like this is occasionally addressed in blog posts (such as those by Julia Wise at Giving Gladly and Nate Soares' Replacing Guilt series) or podcasts (like Howie's 80k episode). But is there anyone working full-time on trying to improve the mental health of EAs at a large scale - e.g. by generating more material like this? And if not, what would the best interventions for someone in that position to try? I'm thinking particularly about a hypothetical person funded by grants to do so, since it doesn't seem like something which relies too heavily on being at an existing org.
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I recently got a wee grant to investigate this. Working with a therapist (Damon Sasi) to survey and design things. Currently planning to focus on undergrads and dropouts.
If you know anyone who could use help, send them this https://forms.gle/XydbsMw4Hkyrs4As6
If you have ideas or want to help, talk to me!
I've recently received a grant from EA Funds for a pilot project on exactly this!
I'll be publishing a series of articles on the Forum over the next several weeks looking at the most effective ways people can improve their wellbeing.
I'm currently in the weeds of researching a whole range of potential interventions/ suggestions but excited to move forward soon with publishing some initial findings.
Definitely keen to discuss the project with anyone interested/ with ideas they think could be useful/ possibly wanting to contribute.
[edit: I've now written up a rough explanation of the project's aims and concept here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OFXR8Ltuo73lqt6_kjoPBJogkuQ8B-RHzE12GRPfpCU/edit?usp=sharing]
There is this thing, the EA Mental Health Navigator
There are some "EA coaches", though I'm not sure what balance they tend to strike between mental health and increasing productivity.
Scott Alexander has been compiling some articles here: https://lorienpsych.com/ This is sort of meant as an early prototype of the ideas here: https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/06/20/cost-disease-in-medicine-the-practical-perspective/ It seems pretty basic, but I've found it very useful. It's rare to have any kind of source that is simultaneously A) high trust informally, B) from a conventionally credentialed expert and C) offering that advice sincerely in a way that aligns with your goals (as opposed to avoiding liability, etc).
I'm not sure generating more material is the way to go. I don't have it all compiled, but I feel like there's plenty of EA content along the lines of "don't feel guilty all the time for not giving away all of your money".
Also FWIW, I think a big part of what you're describing in selection effects. EA might be the proximate cause of guilt, but it's a community that selects for neurotic and scrupulous people.
Hey Richard,
I’m one of the EA therapists interested in a more collective mental health care initiative in EA. I’m currently running complimentary peer process support groups that incorporate mental health first aid skills/support but also serves as a space for existential and philosophical explorations and meaning making that I know many EAs benefit tremendously from. The goal of these groups is to be a self-sustaining small group force that can run without a therapist intervention. I’m primarily interested in helping pass on therapy tools, knowledge and education that can be held be community connectedness and the natural curiosity of EAs!
I’m open to anything you have as a suggestion to help me pick up more momentum. And if you’re interested to join a group message me at gina@sunstonecounselors.com
Gina and several other therapists in EA are listed here: https://eamentalhealth.wixsite.com/navigator/therapists
I co-organized the Unconference with Manuel Allgaier for the last 3 years and share the impression that there is a huge need for support structures for struggling EAs. My current idea is to run an event in summer 2022 focused on Burnout Prevention/Mental Health for EAs.
If you are interested in giving input/sharing advice/organizing the event with me, don't hesitate to reach out!
I recently completed an internship at Nonlinear. As part of that internship, I interviewed a few people in order to learn about their experiences with mental health. I could write up a summary of results if anyone is interested (although I'm writing up the results of my interviews re: the AI safety pipeline is higher on the list).
When I left, Nonlinear was considering investing in Multiplers for Existing Talent in AI (possibly other existential risks too). The idea was to identify high impact people and offer them funding for items or services that might improve their productivity. Therapy was one such service that seemed promising.
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).
I'm guessing you've probably seen this already if you're interested in burnout for EAs but this is a good article on the topic published a few years ago on the Forum (though I'm sure a new article could add additional value!)
Me soon hopefully!
I'm currently still a student but graduate in June 2022 and hoping to go straight onto an (e.g.) EAIF fund doing peer support and mental health strategy input in EA Groups, or something more generally in the mental health x community building space.
Let me know if you'd like to chat more about this (anyone)! <3
Hi Richard,
We’ve received a grant for designing a mindfulness-based mental health project. Our vision is to create an online 4-8 week-long program for EAs, with a facilitator and peer-support group. Each week will focus on some relevant topic. We are currently working on workshops on Self-Compassion, Widening the Circles of Compassion, Relating to others. We are planning to continue with workshops on imposter syndrome and feelings of shame and guilt, uncertainty etc. We would love to hear your feedback on our work in progress, what you think about these problems, and how to address them.
If anybody wants to discuss it further, feel free to contact us: kristyna@stastna.cz
Many thanks,
Kristyna Stastna and Terezie Kosikova
Hi Richard,
Yes! As Dicentra mentioned in her comment, there is an EA Mental Health Navigator Service, which was first launched in 2019 (more information available here). Danica Wilbanks recently (as in today, November 3rd) posted an update on the EA Mental Health Navigator Service, which is available here.
The EA Mental Health Navigator Service is meant to assist EAs with finding helpful mental health resources and accessing care. In October, the Navigator Service received a grant from the EA Infrastructure Fund to fund a part-time Project Manager and expand to become a global network of navigator volunteers, who help with both curating material for a publicly available databank of EA mental health resources and meeting with EA community members who might need some extra help finding mental health resources.
I'm the new Project Manager, and I'm hoping to greatly expand the service over the next 6 months. Starting this week, I'm recruiting volunteers who are skilled in either marketing or web design, as well as volunteers who are keen to either help with updating and continuing to build the resource databank or help out with providing consultations to EA community members. If you know of anyone who might be interested in volunteering, please do encourage them to reach out to me at ea.mh.navigator@gmail.com.
Here's a directory of Coaches and therapists in the effective altruism & rationality sphere.
(Apologies if that was already mentioned - I only skimmed the other answers)
Comments2
Minor related thing: This small thread starting with "An effective mental health intervention, for me, is listening to a podcast which ideally (1) discusses the thing I'm struggling with and (2) has EA, Rationality or both in the background. I gain both in-the-moment relief, and new hypotheses to test or tools to try.
Esp since it would be scalable, this makes me think that creating an EA mental health podcast would be an intervention worth testing - I wonder if anyone is considering this?"
Curated and popular this week
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Note: I am not a malaria expert. This is my best-faith attempt at answering a question that was bothering me, but this field is a large and complex field, and I’ve almost certainly misunderstood something somewhere along the way.
Summary
While the world made incredible progress in reducing malaria cases from 2000 to 2015, the past 10 years have seen malaria cases stop declining and start rising. I investigated potential reasons behind this increase through reading the existing literature and looking at publicly available data, and I identified three key factors explaining the rise:
1. Population Growth: Africa's population has increased by approximately 75% since 2000. This alone explains most of the increase in absolute case numbers, while cases per capita have remained relatively flat since 2015.
2. Stagnant Funding: After rapid growth starting in 2000, funding for malaria prevention plateaued around 2010.
3. Insecticide Resistance: Mosquitoes have become increasingly resistant to the insecticides used in bednets over the past 20 years. This has made older models of bednets less effective, although they still have some effect. Newer models of bednets developed in response to insecticide resistance are more effective but still not widely deployed.
I very crudely estimate that without any of these factors, there would be 55% fewer malaria cases in the world than what we see today. I think all three of these factors are roughly equally important in explaining the difference.
Alternative explanations like removal of PFAS, climate change, or invasive mosquito species don't appear to be major contributors.
Overall this investigation made me more convinced that bednets are an effective global health intervention.
Introduction
In 2015, malaria rates were down, and EAs were celebrating. Giving What We Can posted this incredible gif showing the decrease in malaria cases across Africa since 2000:
Giving What We Can said that
> The reduction in malaria has be
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“I” refers to Zach, the Centre for Effective Altruism's CEO. Oscar is CEA’s Chief of Staff. We are grateful to all the CEA staff and community members who have contributed insightful input and feedback (directly and indirectly) during the development of our strategy and over many years. Mistakes are of course our own.
Exec summary
As one CEA, we are taking a principles-first approach to stewardship of the EA community.
During the search for a new CEO, the board and search committee were open to alternative strategic directions, but from the beginning of my tenure, we’ve committed to a strategy under which we will:
* Operate as one CEA, rather than winding down, breaking up or renaming the organization. Instead of optimizing for each of our team’s programs, we’ll be optimizing for EA as a whole.
* Take a principles-first approach to EA, rather than becoming an AI org or otherwise re-orienting ourselves to specific causes.
* Take greater responsibility for stewardship of the EA community, rather than restricting ourselves to passively providing infrastructure and support. This post explores stewardship in greater detail.
Stewardship is about actors taking more responsibility for reaching and raising EA’s ceiling, and we believe CEA should play a leading role in steering, supporting and coordinating the community. Importantly, however, stewardship of EA is not ownership of EA: we don’t want to be the only leaders, and we do want a close collaboration with the community.
During 2024 we focussed on building strong foundations that CEA will require to succeed at stewarding the community, including making over 20 hires (having started the year with 34 staff) while cutting a quarter of our costs, and developing our strategy for 2025 and 2026, including by listening to and learning from members of the EA community during visits I made to over half a dozen countries and in more than 200 one-on-one meetings. I feel good about the foundations we built and having priori
Relevant opportunities
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).
I'm guessing you've probably seen this already if you're interested in burnout for EAs but this is a good article on the topic published a few years ago on the Forum (though I'm sure a new article could add additional value!)