UlfJohansson
Bio
Participation2
I am a lecturer in public health at Halmstad University, Sweden. Since 2019, I have been helping Happier Lives Institute. My main interests are system change, tax policy, global health and public health. At the moment I am writing a draft about EA System Change.
How others can help me
Help me start EA System Change.
How I can help others
I am good at finding articles, I have much knowledge about public health and I have quite many connections in the EA community. I am also doing a little research and I have knowledge about things that may not be very common in the EA community. E.g. welfare systems, income equality, global mental health and so on. So I would gladly help if you need it!
Posts 1
Comments5
Hi everyone! My name is Ulf Graf. I am a 33 year old lecturer in public health at Halmstad University, Sweden. My main interest now is "Effective Altruism Systemic Change", so if anyone else is interested, please contact me! I think that green basic income (basic income funded by green taxation) has most potential for systemic change.
So now I am looking more into taxes that can change the world (at least a little). Because with taxes, it may be possible to tackle poverty, climate change, animal suffering, health problems and premature death and also fund basic income. Environmental taxes like carbon taxes, energy taxes, deforestation taxes, meat taxes, aviation fuel taxes, shipping-fuel taxes, green land value tax and the polluter pays principle may be helpful in that case. Charity Entrepreneurship has suggested charities that try to reduce alcohol, tobacco and sodium consumption. So health taxes are also interesting because alcohol, tobacco, unhealthy food and air pollution accounts for 29,4 million deaths and 819 million DALY annually.
I became interested in effective altruism because I had made my bachelor's thesis about buddhist views of altruism and was looking for articles about altruism. In 2019, I clicked on the Happier Lives Institute's research agenda and thought it was really interesting. So I replied to everything in that agenda in an email and said that I wanted to volunteer there. Since then I jave been helping out there in periods. I also have been a board member of the Swedish Netwok for Global Mental Health. I am also trying to start a research project that is "dance on prescription", since I have been dancing a lot. But I am interested in global health, mental health, happiness, climate change, public health and other things as well.
Fun fact 1: I was at a hilarious job interview once. A 65-year-old professor and her 45-year-old secretary interviewed me for a job as a research assistant.
"What do you do on your leisure time?" the professor asked.
"I am doing pole dancing," I said because I was going on a pole fitness course.
"I don't know what it is. Can you please explain that for me?"
"Well..."
"It is when you are dancing around a pole," the secretary said and tried to change topic for the conversation.
"That sounds great! My husband never wants to dance with me so I should put up a pole in my bedroom so we can dance."
She was thinking pole dancing was dancing around a small maypole. When the interview was over, the secretary told her what pole dancing was and they laughed so they bursted out in tears. I got the job.
Fun fact 2: Ulf means wolf and Graf means grave in old norse. It may sound cool but it is a dorky name and only popular among people who are over 80-years-old.
References:
Global Burden of Disease Collaborators & Ärnlöv, J. (2020). Global burden of 87 risk factors in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019. The Lancet, 396(10258), 1223-1249.
Murray, C. J. (2019). Health effects of dietary risks in 195 countries, 1990–2017: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study. Lancet, 393(10184), 1958-72.
Sumaila, U. R., Wabnitz, C. C., Teh, L. S., Teh, L. C., Lam, V. W., Sumaila, H., ... & Polasky, S. (2024). Utilizing basic income to create a sustainable, poverty-free tomorrow. Cell Reports Sustainability.
All the best,
Ulf Graf
- Name: List of mental health apps.
- What is it?
- Mental health apps from a systematic review, research papers and pilot studies.
- Why do you like it?
- I have not tried these. But they seem to be promising because of the research behind them.
- Where to start?
The list of the most promising apps against mental illness according to a systematic review (Miralles et al., 2020):
- Actissist and UCSF PRIME reduced psychotic symptoms and symptoms of schizophrenia.
- Virtual Hope Box reduced self-harming and suicidal behaviour.
- Agoraphobia free reduced symptoms of agoraphobia.
- Challenger reduced general anxiety and social anxiety.
- MoodHacker and SuperBetter reduce depression.
- SuperBetter increased pain management and reduced depression (d= 1.05) (Roepke et al., 2015; Devan et al., 2019; Miralles et al., 2020).
- PTSD Coach reduced PTSD symptoms (d= .41), depressive symptoms (d= .45) and increased psychosocial functioning (d= .51) (Kuhn et al., 2017).
Some additional apps are listed here:
- Mindease reduced anxiety. A pilot study showed a 51 % reduction in anxiety (Brietbart, 2018).
- Happify increased positive mood with 27 % and well-being with 11 % during a 8 week trial and it had a dose-response relationship (Carpenter et al., 2016; Parks et al., 2018).
- TeleCoach reduced hazardous alcohol use (d= 1.37) (Berman et al., 2020).
- ‘Calm’ and ‘Headspace use mindfulness and guided meditation. Headspace reduced anxiety and depression. It also increased positive affect and well-being (Bostock et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2020).
- ‘CBTi Coach’ and Moodmission uses CBT principles and techniques (Wang et al., 2020).
- Additional evidence-based apps against mental illness can be found at the United Kingdom National Health Service: https://www.nhs.uk/apps-library/category/mental-health/
- There are many systematic reviews, meta-analyses and other research that look at more apps. It would be good to do an overview over the evidence and accessability in the field of mental health apps.
References
Berman, A. H., Molander, O., Tahir, M., Törnblom, P., Gajecki, M., Sinadinovic, K., & Andersson, C. (2020). Reducing Risky Alcohol Use via Smartphone App Skills Training Among Adult Internet Help-Seekers: A Randomized Pilot Trial. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 11.
Bostock, S., Crosswell, A. D., Prather, A. A., & Steptoe, A. (2019). Mindfulness on-the-go: Effects of a mindfulness meditation app on work stress and well-being. Journal of occupational health psychology, 24(1), 127.
Brietbart. (2018). Mind Ease: a promising new mental health intervention. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/kuZz3aB6Z7tciEhG5/mind-ease-a-promising-new-mental-health-intervention
Carpenter, J., Crutchley, P., Zilca, R. D., Schwartz, H. A., Smith, L. K., Cobb, A. M., & Parks, A. C. (2016). Seeing the “big” picture: big data methods for exploring relationships between usage, language, and outcome in internet intervention data. Journal of medical Internet research, 18(8), e241.
Devan, H., Farmery, D., Peebles, L., & Grainger, R. (2019). Evaluation of self-management support functions in apps for people with persistent pain: systematic review. JMIR mHealth and uHealth, 7(2), e13080.
Fu, Z., Burger, H., Arjadi, R., & Bockting, C. L. (2020). Effectiveness of digital psychological interventions for mental health problems in low-income and middle-income countries: a systematic review and meta-analysis. The Lancet Psychiatry.
Kuhn, E., Kanuri, N., Hoffman, J. E., Garvert, D. W., Ruzek, J. I., & Taylor, C. B. (2017). A randomized controlled trial of a smartphone app for posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology, 85(3), 267–273. https://doi.org/10.1037/ccp0000163
Miralles, I., Granell, C., Díaz-Sanahuja, L., Van Woensel, W., Bretón-López, J., Mira, A., ... & Casteleyn, S. (2020). Smartphone apps for the treatment of mental disorders: systematic review. JMIR mHealth and uHealth, 8(4), e14897.
Parks, A. C., Williams, A. L., Tugade, M. M., Hokes, K. E., Honomichl, R. D., & Zilca, R. D. (2018). Testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention to improve depression, anxiety, and resilience: A randomized controlled trial. International Journal of Wellbeing, 8(2).
Roepke, A. M., Jaffee, S. R., Riffle, O. M., McGonigal, J., Broome, R., & Maxwell, B. (2015). Randomized controlled trial of SuperBetter, a smartphone-based/internet-based self-help tool to reduce depressive symptoms. Games for health journal, 4(3), 235-246.
Wang, L., Fagan, C., & Yu, C. L. (2020). Popular mental health apps (MH apps) as a complement to telepsychotherapy: Guidelines for consideration. Journal of Psychotherapy Integration, 30(2), 265.
Thank you very much, Toby! I think everything is clear, but thanks for the opportunity! It is very kind of you to welcome all new people to the forum, I think it is very important. :)
Cheers,
Ulf