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Mental Health in the United Arab Emirates

Mental Health in the United Arab EmiratesOn October 9, 2022, the Department of Community Development of Abu Dhabi (DCD) released a “Parents’ Guide on Mental Health” to commemorate World Mental Health Day. The guide counsels parents on day-to-day stressors, mental health care, interpersonal relationships, lifestyle changes and external pressures on their children’s mental health. This initiative is one of the many steps taken to improve mental health in the United Arab Emirates. Below are some of the UAE’s concerted efforts to expand the conversations around mental health, promote public support services and systems and counter years of stigmatization and silence.

Mental Health in the United Arab Emirates in Numbers

Despite the country’s high-income status, scholars of the UAE have also detected a lack of reporting and a failure to address mental health in their national database. A report by Effective Altruism, NYU Abu Dhabi, which summarizes the data from WHO and the 2019 GBD Report, notes that there are approximately 24,000 cases of mental health disorders in the UAE. It observes that the most prevalent conditions among the population are depression, anxiety and substance abuse.

On the other hand, access to health care workers like psychologists, social workers and occupational and speech therapists is low, with a ratio of 7.5 workers per 100,000 of the population in 2016 (the global median is nine). Notably, feelings of hopelessness and panic have only worsened during the pandemic, as documented in a study by UAE scholars in Frontiers in Psychiatry. According to their analysis, more than one-third of the participants experienced stress from work, home and financial matters during the coronavirus pandemic. Changes like lack of physical activities were also significant factors behind the deteriorating mental well-being of people in quarantine.

The UAE’s Efforts to Mitigate Mental Health Crises

Despite the known stigma around mental health care due to cultural values like masking familial distress in public, privacy, shame or beliefs in destiny, the UAE has implemented several policies to destigmatize and support the improvement of mental health care resources in the country. Some of the most notable initiatives include:

  1. Since 2019, the Ministry of Health and Prevention launched numerous digital resources as part of the “National Policy for the Promotion of Mental Health.” The policy identifies five key strategic objectives to promote awareness of mental health. It guarantees the provision of mental health services to outpatients, the development of mental health units for inpatients in mental health hospitals and the establishment of community mental health services, including outreach services, care, home support services and community rehabilitation.
  2. MOHAP also organized awareness lectures in English and Urdu to raise awareness about mental disorders among Sharjah taxi drivers.
  3. The Abu Dhabi Public Health Centre launched a public mental health program to promote projects and resources for community mental health care and tackle the internalized and social stigma around mental disorders and treatments. It also provides emergency, non-emergency and on-demand confidential psychological support contacts, including a free-of-cost “Estijabah” crisis number.
  4. To advocate for informed quality discourses on mental illnesses and stigma, the Al Jalila Foundation has awarded one-year fellowships to 181 journalists to research, discuss and report on mental health issues.
  5. As a response to the increased stressors during the coronavirus pandemic, the Federal Authority for Government Human Resources instituted the “Hayat” or Employees Assistance Program, which gave all employees of the federal government access to social and psychological support for their mental and moral health. They provide many communication channels that employees can contact for free consultations or 30% discounts for themselves and their families.
  6. Finally, in 2021, the UAE passed its mental health care draft law which aims to protect the rights and dignity of people who seek mental health care, reduce the negative effects of mental disorders for individuals and society and promote successful rehabilitation of psychiatric patients in the community.

The Road Ahead: Speedbumps and Potentialities

As noted, conversations around mental health in the United Arab Emirates have made huge strides in destigmatizing and propelling a more comprehensive understanding of mental illnesses and the rights of those affected by them. Yet, research has shown that the high cost of mental health services is the next impending barrier for struggling individuals in the country. A German market analyst, Kenkou, noted that the UAE has the second most expensive therapy sessions.

While digital access to mental health support has improved considerably, there is a need for more comprehensive insurance coverage of diagnostic assessments, treatments, psychotherapy and medications. Ultimately, mental health in the United Arab Emirates holds the possibility of going beyond the stereotypes, if it continues to expand its focus on the accessibility of care and dignity of service seekers.

– Saumya Malhotra
Photo: Flickr

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Effective Altruism Offers a New Perspective on Ending Poverty 

Effective altruismHow can we do the most good in the world? This is the guiding question of a new philosophical and moral movement called “effective altruism” (EA). Effective altruism, a concept coined by philosopher Peter Singer, is an attempt to use common sense and research to determine how each person can maximize his or her positive impact.

What is Effective Altruism?

The basic idea is simple. There are many things a person can do to improve the world. An individual can donate to charities, volunteer or support positive government action. Effective altruists, however, believe that it is not just a matter of doing good wherever it is most convenient. Take charities, for example. Some causes achieve their goals more efficiently than others. Donating $10,000 to an emergency surgery fund might save one life. But, donating that same money to a group that, for instance, teaches impoverished children how to read, could have a vastly greater effect. One of the issues effective altruists care the most about is global poverty.

Global Poverty: A High-Priority Cause

Addressing poverty is one of the most cost-effective and reliable ways to reduce suffering. Unlike some other issues, global poverty is a problem with proven solutions. Over the past 40 years, extreme poverty rates have dropped from 42% to less than 10%. With such a successful track record, it is easy to imagine that future efforts to reduce poverty will continue to pay off.

Looking at the measures taken on the ground, it is not difficult to see how a little money can have a big impact in solving global poverty. Parasitic diseases, for instance, are a huge drain on wealth and stability in large parts of the developing world, but they can be cured with a pill that costs less than a dollar. Mosquito nets are just as affordable, with the ability to protect more than half a million potential malaria victims a year.

Prioritizing Maximum Impact

According to effective altruism, it is not enough to devote time or money to a cause that generally has a good track record. An individual must look at exactly where their money is going. Even poverty-reducing measures have significant differences in efficiency and results. For example, a recent study compared the cost-benefit ratios of sustainable livelihoods graduation programs, livelihood development programs and cash transfers. Although graduation programs tend to cost more, they have far greater long-term success in lifting people out of poverty.

People are becoming far more conscientious of the causes and charities to which they choose to devote their time and money. Effective altruism is emerging in this environment. GiveWell, an effective altruism organization, analyzes the progress reports of well-known charities and conducts independent investigations into their effectiveness.

GiveWell is not afraid of courting controversy either. GiveWell recommends that individuals stop giving to some of the most well-known poverty reduction charities. According to GiveWell, these organizations lack transparency, show unimpressive results or already have more funds than they can effectively use. In the spirit of effective altruism, GiveWell instead recommends a list of alternate organizations that can fulfill similar goals far more efficiently.

Considering Effective Altruism

Effective altruism, as well as philosophically-related organizations like GiveWell, are not without critics. Some, particularly those involved with more traditional models of charity and activism, argue that effective altruism puts too many limits on an individual’s ability to donate however they choose. But, such criticisms notwithstanding, effective altruism offers a fresh perspective on how to approach pressing issues like global poverty.

– Thomas Brodey
Photo: Wikimedia

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Effective Altruism to Fight Poverty

Effective Altruism 
From an idea and philosophy, Effective Altruism has evolved and transformed into a very broad and cohesive social movement over the years. Though heavily featured in the nonprofit sector, Effective Altruism focuses on scientific projects, policy-making and organizations with the ethos of finding effective ways to do ‘the most good’ and ‘do good better,’ both individually and collectively. Effective Altruism prioritizes a variety of different causes, impartiality and cost-effectiveness, along with assessing potential funding impacts and counterfactual reasoning.

Effective Altruism Singapore

The Borgen Project had an opportunity to get in touch with the Effective Altruism chapter in Singapore, an up and coming organization with a focus on ‘effective giving.’ As an organization, the chapter is able to sustain and appeal to people because of Singapore’s friendly and burgeoning nonprofit environment as well as its relatively wealthier population, and more stable incomes and economy.

With a heavy focus on research and careful analysis, the Effective Altruism Chapter in Singapore, in particular, is able to work on the best cases and understand specific communities in need. Like many of its companion chapters around the world, it also focuses on more neglected issues in global poverty reduction initiatives such as global health and development and factory-farmed animals as well as other problems and existential risks like natural disasters and climate change. Stunting, in particular, is a grave and predominant focus for Effective Altruism Singapore, with a heavy concentration on child and maternal health care malnutrition owing to the fact that nearly 25.8 percent of children in southeast Asia are stunted. Effective Altruism’s evidence-based research patterns and analysis shows that around 30 percent of children in communities across Indonesia and the Philippines experience adverse impacts of stunting.

The GiveWell Framework

Moreover, the chapter employs the more empirical and analytical GiveWell framework in its work to evaluate potentially high-impact giving opportunities in SouthEast Asia. GiveWell, one of the pioneering organizations behind the Effective Altruism movement, focuses on scouting reliable charities that can improve lives the most per dollar so that there is effective and impactful usage of philanthropic funds. The objective is chiefly to deduce how useful it is to give an amount equivalent to a dollar and evaluate how it could potentially impact a specific target community.

In accordance with Effective Altruism’s GiveWell framework, giving opportunities are largely dependent on an in-depth analysis involving thousands of hours of research which it then uses to find top-rated charities backed by evidence, thorough analysis and vetting to ensure transparency and accountability. GiveWell also tries to understand the root causes of issues such as stunting and malnutrition. Organizations such as the Malaria Foundation and Malaria Consortium remain some of GiveWell’s most important recommendations in the health care aspect of its many global poverty alleviation priorities.

The GiveWell Framework’s Role at Effective Altruism Singapore

Consequently, many of Effective Altruism Singapore’s pilot projects and initiatives employ the GiveWell framework as it is helpful while analyzing and understanding some of the high-impact giving opportunities in Southeast Asia, especially in key priority realms like the provision of WASH (Water, Hygiene and Sanitation) services as well as childhood malnutrition. In the year 2018, the chapter focused on looking for organizations and charities that delivered more evidence-based interventions that targeted preventable and cost-effective health issues and impacted some of the poorest populations and communities in Southeast Asia.

To conclude, the workings and functioning of Effective Altruism Singapore help paint a broad picture of the Effective Altruism philosophy and movement as a whole due to its rather abstract nature. It remains groundbreaking and innovative because it offers a more objective as well as a critical approach to addressing and combatting poverty in the long run especially because it aims to use more research and evidence focused methods.

As a whole, it remains an essential and significant reflection into the applications of the ideology and the potential impacts it can have on the way one perceives global poverty-related issues across various communities around the world.

– Shivani Ekkanath
Photo: Wikipedia Commons

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Critical Global Issues That Require Immediate Attention

Critical Global Issues
Global issues can be defined as any social, economic, political and environmental issues that affect the world in a catastrophic way. Living in the current world certainly has its uncertainties and challenges. There are numerous critical global issues that need immediate attention. Although progress toward solving them is being made, it is rather slow.

Five Critical Global Issues

  1. Biosecurity: Biosecurity refers to the measures taken to reduce the spread or introduction of infectious diseases in animals, plants and human beings. The goal of biosecurity is to prevent various biological risk factors whether natural, accidental or man-made. These risk factors have the potential to cause mass destruction, killing millions of people and causing huge economic loss and instability.
  2. Promoting Effective Altruism: Effective altruism can be described as various ways to benefit others as much as possible using one’s own resources. It involves devoting all kinds of altruistic behavior like time, money, energy and attention to people’s well-being. The four main focus areas of effective altruism are poverty reduction, meta effective altruism, the far future and animal suffering.Charity is one of the many ways to promote effective altruism. In the United States alone, there are about one million charities receiving a total of approximately $200 billion a year. Also, it is not necessary to be a millionaire to be effectively altruistic; even the smallest donation can make a difference in the grand scheme of things.
  3. Social Hostility: Social hostility can also be referred to as conflicts or wars caused due to intolerance and discrimination against others’ beliefs. In the present world, violence and discrimination have reached new heights in almost all regions of the world. Religious conflicts are seen to be strongly prevalent in one-third of the world’s 198 countries and territories. The countries ranking high for such conflicts are Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Somalia and Israel.
  4. Destruction of Nature: Humans’ destruction of nature is taking a major toll on the world. Deforestation, done for various reasons like farming, cattle grazing, expanding cities and building dams, has caused environmental degradation and climate change. Deforestation has also led to losing 18.7 million acres of forests every year, which equals to 27 soccer fields a minute.Trees help absorb carbon dioxide which helps to cool the planet’s temperature down but the loss of trees from deforestation reverses this process. According to the World Wildlife Fund, 15 percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from deforestation. Thus, destruction of nature is another critical global issue that requires immediate preventive measures.
  5. Children’s Lives: In a report from 2017, UNICEF claims that child mortality has dropped from 12.6 million in 1990 to 5.6 million in 2016. This is a positive change but the number of deaths is still extremely significant; 15,000 children die every day. One of the significant causes of child mortality is malnutrition, while pneumonia, diarrhea and malaria are also significant factors.According to a report published from Save the Children on May 31, 2018, it is estimated that around 1.2 billion children are exposed to at least one of three threats: poverty, conflict or discrimination against girls. 153 million people are at a risk of suffering from all three. For the overall progress toward healthy living and well-being to continue, there is an urgent need to address and assist these vulnerable children.

These are only a few of the world’s most critical global issues. If society is to one day come together and attain total peace and security, these problems must be attended to as soon as possible. The safety of future generations depends on the actions taken now.

– Shweta Roy
Photo: Flickr

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Rethinking Effective Charity: Giving What We Can

Effective Charity
Giving What We Can (GWWC) is an international society that works to eliminate extreme poverty. It recommends effective charity organizations and its members pledge to give at least 10% of their income to such charities.

Dr. Toby Ord Established Giving What We Can in 2009

Dr. Ord, an Oxford ethics researcher, claims the inspiration for the organization came from Peter Singer’s essay “Famine, Affluence, and Morality,” which argues that the affluent have a moral obligation to donate to the people less well-off.

The organization draws heavily on modern ethical philosophy, especially the effective altruism movement. This philosophical movement attempts to use evidence and analysis to determine the most effective humanitarian causes and charities to donate to.

Taking a Top-down Approach to Evaluating Charities

The organization begins with the big-picture, evaluating which areas — health, education, emergency aid, etc. — require the most attention. The group compares sub-areas within those categories, such as specific diseases. Finally, it analyzes the particular charities that work in this sub-area, such as the Against Malaria Foundation.

In this evaluation process, the organization focuses on three main criteria: neglect, tractability and impact. A neglected cause means the issue is not receiving proper attention from humanitarian efforts. Tractability defines a cause that has a workable solution that the sponsor can effectively implement. Impact focuses on the number of lives that can be improved by investing in a given cause.

GWWC’s website uses schistosomiasis, a disease involving parasitic flatworms, as an example of a cause that clearly meets all three criteria: “[Schistosomiasis] affects millions of people (impact) but it’s cheap and easy to treat (tractability) […] However, it is relatively underfunded (it is part of the so-called ‘Neglected Tropical Diseases’).”

For this reason, GWWC lists the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative as one of its top charities. Its other established, most effective charity is the Against Malaria Foundation. They list Deworming the World Initiative and Project Healthy Children as promising top charities.

Though it accepts donations, Giving What We Can does not ask for them. Instead, the humanitarian organization prefers to play “a complementary role,” asking members to commit to giving to effective charities instead.

So far, GWWC’s 1,696 members have donated more than $36.3 million to effective charities and pledged to donate a further $649 million over their lifetimes.

– Steffen Seitz

Photo: Flickr

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Social Movement Among Millenials: Effective Altruism

Social Movement
A young man decided to devote his life to saving the lives of people in poverty-stricken countries. Thus, he completed his doctorate of philosophy at the University of Oxford and became a trader at a Wall Street firm. Although the logic in this plan is not immediately clear, in the scheme of effective altruism, it makes perfect sense.

Effective altruism is “a philosophy and social movement which applies evidence and reason to determining the most effective ways to improve the world”. It is a trend, primarily among young people, to live their best life while also giving the most they can to help other people. It is not sacrificing but flourishing.

The Oxford grad and trader, Matt Wage, made it his goal to give a sufficient amount of his annual salary to save the lives of millions of children around the world who die annually from preventable diseases. He realized that, as a trader, he would be able to give a larger amount of money away, and within a year of work, he was donating a six-figure sum to highly effective charities. He is able to lead a stable, comfortable life in a promising career while helping hundreds of people across the globe.

Philosophy plays a major role in the workings of effective altruism because it challenges the relationship between impulse and reason: are we guided entirely by impulse and only later apply reason as a hollow justification, or do we decipher our reasoning before even considering out actions? How does logic play into charitable acts? Is it a guiding principle some possess and others do not, or do generous people simply give as a matter of impulse? Like many things in philosophy, there are no simple answers, but it is enough to challenge popular notions of behavior by benefiting oneself while also helping others.

Effective altruists also challenge conventions in that they are highly selective in where they let their money go. Rather than spreading funds across many different charities, they donate to just one or two organizations they know are highly effective and make the most of their funds. This requires thorough research into the progress and activity of different organizations and a strong passion for one or two causes.

Effective altruists also employ logic in funneling their donations. They believe that rather than donating to causes that attract people through emotional sway, people should donate funds to causes that most need them and will most effectively use them. This promotes charitable organizations to attract donors through demonstrated transparency and efficiency rather than eliciting emotional responses.

As Millenials enter the workforce, many are considering careers that allow them to give back while living modest lives. They are directing the course of their lives in the interest of others while giving back to their own communities through hard work and human capital. In this way, they are leading industrious lives and helping others do the same. They employ both logic and emotion and shed an optimistic light on the future of charity and goodwill.

– Jenny Wheeler

Sources: TED, Boston Review
Photo: Pxfuel