Funding Mental Health for Physical Health Outcomes...and Vice Versa

With Will Troy from Flourishing Minds Fund

TRANSCRIPT

Will Troy: You know, mental health is health and (they) have been realizing that you can fund both mental health interventions for physical health or public health outcomes like mortality or something like that, as well as, you know, physical health interventions for mental health outcomes. So it can go both ways. So just to give an example in our work, a couple examples.

Last year we funded a project by an organization called Zvandiri and they're doing CBT. So Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for young mothers with HIV. And they've seen significant reduction in transmission of HIV to infants, significant increase in upkeep of HIV treatment and then also significant reduction in infant mortality. So mental health intervention, physical health outcome.

And then another example, there is a newer organization, that's working at Columbia called Actra And they're also doing CBT, but they're doing it focused on young men with the intended outcome of crime reduction. So crime is, you know, hugely damaging for communities and populations that are suffering from high rates of crime. And this is replicating a previous program that was operated in Liberia that saw a huge reductions in crime from CBT for young men.

So, once again, mental health intervention, public health outcome.