Common mental health problems impose significant costs on individuals and societies, yet healthcare systems often overlook them. We provide the first causal evidence on the effectiveness of a pioneering, nationwide mental health service for treating depression and anxiety disorders in England...

Mental health conditions are prevalent but rarely treated in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Little is known about how these conditions affect economic participation. This paper shows that treating mental health conditions substantially improves recipients' capacity to work in these...

Evidence on cannabis legalization's effects on mental health remains scarce, despite both rapid increases in cannabis use and an ongoing mental health crisis in the United States. We use granular geographic data to estimate medical cannabis dispensary availability's effects on self-reported...

We estimate the effect of social media deactivation on users’ emotional state in two large randomized experiments before the 2020 U.S. election. People who deactivated Facebook for the six weeks before the election reported a 0.060 standard deviation improvement in an index of happiness,...

A bi-directional relationship between poverty and mental health may create a vicious cycle, wherein economic hardship and psychological distress reinforce each other. We examine the short-term dynamics between income fluctuations and mental well-being using 17 months of weekly financial diaries...

Although yet to be clearly identified as a clinical condition, there is immense concern at the health and wellbeing consequences of long COVID. Using data collected from nearly half a million Americans in the period June 2022-December 2022 in the US Census Bureau's Household Pulse Survey (HPS),...

Few developments or events in recent decades have changed European societies as quickly and profoundly as the COVID-19 pandemic. Many policy analyses on COVID-19 have focused on the kinds of policies implemented to contain the spread of COVID-19 and their effectiveness in reducing the number of...

Mental health conditions are prevalent but rarely treated in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Little is known about how these conditions affect economic participation. This paper shows that treating mental health conditions substantially improves recipients' capacity to work in these...

Die dem ungebremsten Wachstum verschriebene Wirtschaftspolitik in den USA führt zu erheblichem emotionalen Stress. Den Wirtschaftsmotor auf Hochtouren laufen zu lassen, bedeutet, dass die Maximierung der Produktion im Vordergrund steht, ohne Berücksichtigung der negativen Externalitäten,...

Childhood is a critical period for development of mental health: episodes of mental illness during this time often recur in adulthood but early intervention can be highly effective at reducing this persistence. Understanding determinants of child mental health is therefore key for the design of...

Childhood is a critical period for development of mental health: episodes of mental illness during this time often recur in adulthood but early intervention can be highly effective at reducing this persistence. Understanding determinants of child mental health is therefore key for the design of...

We study how the societal disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic impacted diagnosis of a prevalent childhood mental health condition, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Using both nationwide private health insurance claims and a single state's comprehensive electronic health records,...

Using a sample of Australians who display high rates of early school-leaving, we compare the trajectories of respondents who left school at each incremental age between 14 and 17 with respondents who left at 18 years old or more, in terms of homelessness, incarceration, substance use and mental...

A bi-directional relationship between poverty and mental health may create a vicious cycle, wherein economic hardship and psychological distress reinforce each other. We examine the short-term dynamics between income fluctuations and mental well-being using 17 months of weekly financial diaries...

Vlassopoulos et al. (2024) find that after providing two hours of telephone counseling over three months, a sample of Bangladeshi women saw significant reductions in stress and depression after ten months. We find three anomalies. First, estimates are almost entirely driven by reverse-scored...

Rahman et al. (2021) study the correlation between mental health and food insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic in Bangladesh. They report that food insecurity increases in the sample and that this is associated with increased stress. This result is not reproducible from the author-provided...

Perú tops the global ranking in terms of mortality rates from COVID-19. This study explores the effects of geographic proximity to overburdened hospitals on mental health outcomes during the COVID-19 crisis in Perú. By using microdata along with a difference-in-differences approach, the...

Using a sample of disadvantaged Australians, we compare trajectories of those who left school before 18 with those who left later, in terms of homelessness, incarceration, substance use and mental health issues. We estimate a staggered difference-in-difference to account for heterogenous...

Many college students experience symptoms of mental health challenges, with depression and anxiety being among the most common. These problems negatively affect academic performance (Brännlund et al. 2017) and overall health (Yang et al. 2024). In the 2021 Healthy Minds Study, 41% of the...

This paper is the first to provide estimates of intergenerational associations in mental health for a low- and middle-income country. Using rich mental health data on ~4,000 parent-child pairs in India, we find intergenerational associations in depression and anxiety scores to be 0.61 and 0.68,...

Among Latin American countries, Peru has one of the highest crime rates, with 9 out of 10 Peruvians reporting feeling unsafe walking the streets at night. This rooted-in-reality feeling of insecurity may harm citizens' mental health. We study the consequences of the Peruvian Safe Neighborhood...

This paper examines the causal impact of a large-scale Turkish language training program on the academic performance, school participation, and mental well-being of Syrian refugee children in T¨urkiye. Using rich administrative data and a staggered difference-in-differences design, we find that...

This paper investigates the impact of social media algorithms on mental health outcomes. I exploit a quasi-experimental setting combining data from the Dutch Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social Sciences (LISS) coupled with the introduction of the algorithmic feed on Instagram in 2016. I...

This study examines the causal impact of addictive patterns of social media use on mental health outcomes through a randomized controlled trial conducted among young individuals (18 to 24 years) in Pakistan. Participants in the treatment group received an intervention designed to limit their...

Im Juni 2021 startete in Deutschland ein groß angelegtes Feldexperiment zum bedingungslosen Grundeinkommen. Zwei in diesem Wochenbericht zusammengefasste Studien untersuchen, wie sich bedingungslose Geldtransfers in Höhe von monatlich 1200 Euro über einen Zeitraum von drei Jahren auf das...

Vlassopoulos et al. (2024) find that after providing two hours of telephone counseling over three months, a sample of Bangladeshi women saw significant reductions in stress and depression after ten months. We find three anomalies. First, estimates are almost entirely driven by reverse-scored...

Rahman et al. (2021) study the correlation between mental health and food insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic in Bangladesh. They report that food insecurity increases in the sample and that this is associated with increased stress. This result is not reproducible from the author-provided...

We investigate the health and labor market consequences of primary care variation in benzodiazepine prescriptions, a common type of low-value care. Linking Dutch general practitioners' records to administrative data, we construct an exogenous measure of prescribing behavior that exploits...