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...

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),...

Despite increasing mental health problems and an existing care gap among university students, cost-effective solutions to bridge this gap are still lacking. Using a reflection intervention, we conduct a randomized controlled trial with undergraduate students in Germany. As part of a thought...

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...

Despite increasing mental health problems and an existing care gap among university students, cost-effective solutions to bridge this gap are still lacking. Using a reflection intervention, we conduct a randomized controlled trial with undergraduate students in Germany. As part of a thought...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

The Covid pandemic arrived in Ireland on February 29, 2020. In the following weeks various restrictions were introduced to stem the spread of the disease. Anxiety over the spread of the disease and over the restrictions introduced led to concerns regarding mental health. This paper uses the...

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...

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,...