Positive effects of EA on mental health

I believe this! Anecdotally:

• I suspect that in the 3 years I've been in the community, I've been day-to-day happier and find more meaning in work; in contrast to eg the same period of time when I joined Google just out of school
• My sense is a lot of my peers from high school or college don't get the same kind of support that EA provides around community, friends, dating, and mission-orientation

Good news if true! Thanks for sharing.

Some other guesses/hypotheses of things that may contribute to positive mental health:

• "For people who feel pulled by all the important problems out there", EA's focus on tractability, cost-effectiveness, and actually doing things that make a difference, may mean that for some people it's a much more hopeful, optimistic, solutions-oriented take than what they're used to. I remember speaking to a Leaf alum (i.e. a teenager) who found Leaf inspiring/motivating in contrast to the climate change doom and gloom that they were usually surrounded by.
• There are a bunch of mental health and wellbeing services out there specifically for EAs. Maybe this is just another opportunity to engage with that sort of support that someone might otherwise have skipped or never had access to. (Although my sense is that these services have developed/spread/grown since the 2022 survey.)
• More generally, plausible mental health / wellbeing discussion and consideration may be more part of the environment, culture, and social norms than they have had in other contexts. A different topic, but I had a similar thing for productivity when I first became more involved with EA -- I was around 21 and had graduated from a top university, but still I'd never really encountered people discussing ways to become more productive and efficient generally. I can imagine a similar thing happening for mental health. (I can also imagine people encounter 'wellness' programs in e.g. corporate environments where they are based on vibes rather than evidence, or otherwise clearly seem to be shallow, hollow, or ineffective, and then the more evidence-based approach within EA makes it resonate more. I think something a little bit like this did happen to me.)
• This is hinted at with "wanting to be impactful", but all the standard stuff in the 80k career guide about fulfilling careers etc.

(Here I'm just assuming the premise is true. I do feel a bit sceptical due to the survey response bias thing. But I don't have counterevidence beyond anecdotes and intuition.)

I would be curious to see this broken down by preexisting mental health status. I don't expect EA to have much negative mental health impact on people who already have ~normal mental health, but given the widespread normalization of e.g. scrupulosity, AI doomerism on the community level, i suspect that people coming into EA with preexisting mental health concerns might see them get worse, or face slower recovery.

Thanks for writing this! I'm curious about how important you think the selection effects are here? eg. in terms of people who have had worse experiences with EA being less likely to fill out the survey. 

I think my initial guess here would be that EA is roughly net neutral for people in terms of mental health, and because I expect the selection effects in who takes the survey to be fairly strong, I don't really update much on seeing the above data

Thanks for the post! I think it provides an interesting (and data-driven!) counterexample to the narratives of neuroticism/scrupulosity around the EA community.

One thing that I would really be interested in is how this issue would look in a survey of people who once identified as EA but no longer do so, since I agree that those who leave EA due to bad experiences are probably underrepresented in this data. As you say, EA isn't one-size-fits-all, so insofar as people are selecting out that doesn't necessarily mean there's a huge problem -- but I'm still curious to see what those numbers would look like!

I wonder how many people come across EA as a result of a mental health problem and post traumatic growth

Thanks so much for writing this – I really appreciated seeing a post about the positive mental health impacts of EA. As someone who's worked in mental health advocacy and now researches mental health (especially in occupational settings), it really resonated with me to see this side of the story being shared. I’ve been EA-adjacent for a long time but only recently got more involved, and I’ve found that having clearer guidance about how to do good with my career and donations – alongside a community of others who care deeply about doing good – has been a huge source of meaning and motivation.

Besides the selection bias mentioned in the post and other comments, I'm also unsure about how much to update on people's assessment of the mental health effects of their actions. I expect most people overestimate the positive mental health effects of any activity they choose to do.

As an extreme example, I expect that most smokers think that smoking is neutral or positive for their mental health, despite probably being net negative.^[1]

1. ^{^}

   I don't know what the research says about this, but LLMs seem to agree:
   
   ChatGPT Deep Research

   

   
   Gemini Deep Research

   

    

   Claude Research

   

    

    

   
   Smoking is an extreme comparison, but the same happens with e.g. veganism
   
   ChatGPT

   

    

   Claude

   

    

   Gemini didn't only consider perceived effects, so it's less relevant

   

In a sense this would be like polling a random cross section of world humanity...most of them are mentally healthy. Currently 1 Billion people have a common mental disorder (CMD), like anxiety, depression, PTSD, as opposed to the Serious one's like Psychosis, Schizophrenia, etc. That makes it 1 of 8 humans, and puts depression as the no. 1 global health disability (all health). So if 1 out of 8 EA'ers responds to the culture with "impact obsession" -- guilt at eating an ice cream cone instead of grinding at their desk kind of thing then that is in line and is a serious thing...EA should work on those issues, make that a less common response to our culture and care for those ill affected, and I applaud Julia and all who do. And just as 1 of 8 EA'ers being depressed isn't helping the effectiveness of our altruistic goals, so the same problem exists in the whole world toward every good goal of humanity. We need to work on those issues. 

So EA should not only be concerned about EA meta health, it should be concerned about the world's mental health. Both. 

I agree that for most being in EA is better for mental health, I find it invigorating to be around a bunch of people interested in doing good for their fellow humans. But depending on various factors, like people self selecting to be in EA because they already feel guilty they're not doing enough, or a tendency to judge themselves and feel guilt, we still have to be promoting mentally healthy ways of being together on our particular mission. 

Here's a little suggestion for EA mental health, reflecting the Harvard study of adult development, an 85 year longitudinal study that said when all is said and done, it's having good relationships that accounted for people having better mental health; Rather than efficiently downing a Huel so you can stay at your desk and keep grinding, lean toward getting together with co-workers or friends for lunch, spend time talking and enjoying each other. Get your mind off work. Try twice a month to do something creative for lunch in the office, like get a bunch of groceries delivered, and have everyone cook a meal together, serve cool drinks to those standing around if there's not enough room in the kitchen for everyone, puts cutting boards out and get those STEM's choppin' broccoli. (like the famous Dana Carvey SNL skit). Spend time together—no talking about work allowed. Anyone who accidentally brings up a work issue, gets some funny punishment...like choppin' more broccoli. 

We are not robots optimizing, we are humans living in relationships, and ice cream always earns more than it takes. Consider more art too. It's basically human relationship in a different medium, proven over and over to improve mental health, and makes people visiting your office (and home) think you are cool. Robots don't need ice cream or art, if you also don't...hmmm...maybe some of you are already transitioning...or you're optimizing on robot criteria rather than human.