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 EA cause areas.

This tag is mostly meant for discussion of mental health as a cause area. For discussion of mental health within the EA community, we suggest using tags like EA Lifestyle or Self-Care.

Further detail

Mental health problems are conditions such as depression, anxiety and schizophrenia. It’s unclear precisely what percent of the DALY burden worldwide they represent. While some reserach 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 true figure may be nearly double that.

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 (Snowden & Sietzy 2016).

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 (Plant 2016).