EA - Pilot Results: High-Impact Psychology/ Mental Health (HIPsy) by Inga

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Pilot Results: High-Impact Psychology/ Mental Health (HIPsy), published by Inga on September 8, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.This is a rough write-up of the results of all the HIPsy pilot activities, outcomes, and suggestions on what to do next.Below, you can find links to created resources for those involved in psychology or mental health who aim to maximize their impact. Additionally, there are results from events and surveys highlighting which (other) resources might be most beneficial for enhancing their impact. You can learn more about the initial project and plan in this EA forum post.Executive summaryWithin this EAIF- funded project, I ran three surveys to determine the demand for network activities, piloted 5 events at EAGx's, and collaborated with others on highly requested materials. Below, you can find the results of these activities.Main outcomesImportance/general Demand:Roughly twice as many people expressed interest in mental health as a cause area (N = 164) compared to those interested in resources for individuals with a background in psychology or how to make an impact with various psychology-related topics (N = 76/77)Neglectedness: The EA Psychology Research Initiative by Lucius Caviola, among others, appears to meet the infrastructural needs around general psychology-related impact regarding longtermist goals. Those infrastructural needs around helping people to have an impact in the mental health space do not yet seem to be covered, even though the work of the HLI paved the way for mental health as a cause area taken seriously within EA.Mental Health-related activities most requested:Among the mental health-related network activities, the most requested ones are mentoring, meetups, workshops, as well as materials related to topics on how to make an impact in the mental health space. The piloted events (talks and workshops/meetups) at EAGxs demonstrated significant interest, evinced by the high number of participants and high perceived impact ratings.Conclusions:More mental health-related infrastructure building seems impactful. The space would benefit from more organized, targeted resources that enable people to make a more substantial impact in a shorter period of time.I believe it would be a good idea to invest in follow-up funding based on the results of this initiative to establish cost-effective corresponding structures and to hire at least one project/community manager for a year. Based on the survey results, this person would build the pool of volunteers to offer and measure the impact of requested events, materials, and a mentoring service.How can you help? If you'd like to fund follow-up activities, feel free to reach out to me at [email protected] you'd be interested in the project manager role, you can apply in