The last update for the Mental Health Navigator was about two years ago, in September 2023. Today we at the Mental Health Navigator (now shortened to MentNav) are writing with an update concerning where things stand.
TLDR
The Mental Health Navigator has split into two websites:
- One that is EA-specific in that it houses listings of mental health providers and coaches recommended by people in Effective Altruism, as well as a webpage listing mental health resources created by the Effective Altruism community: https://www.eamentalhealthnavigator.com/
- One that is geared towards a more general audience, but still uses a particular set of criteria to provide information about free or low-cost mental health resources: https://www.mentnav.org/
History of the Organization
2019-2021 - Project Phase
The first survey to promote EA mental health was launched in 2019 as the 2018 EA Mental Health Survey. The results and analysis of the 2018 EA Mental Health Survey found that, of the 303 respondents to the survey, 30% believed they could personally benefit from an EA Mental Health Navigator Service. The EA Mental Health Care Navigator Pilot was therefore launched in October of 2019 to help EA community members navigate the local, national, and international mental health scenes in terms of both learning about available resources and making plans to access those resources (both online and in-person).
There were two components to the Navigator Pilot: (1) lists of mental health resources based on recommendations from members of the EA community and made publicly available on the Navigator website and (2) a volunteer navigator, who would meet with community members and then research resources that could potentially best support those community members based on factors such as mental health needs, location, and insurance plans. Community members could make use of one or both components of the Navigator Pilot, and those who made use of the services provided by the volunteer navigator had the option to complete a feedback survey at the end of their Navigator Service experience. An update on the EA Mental Health Navigator based on feedback provided between October 2019 and October 2021 was posted on the EA Forum in November of 2021.
2021-2023 - Expansion Phase
In October 2021, the EA Mental Health Navigator Service received a grant from the EA Infrastructure Fund to hire a part-time project manager to build a global EA Mental Health Navigator volunteer network over the course of six months, thereby expanding the program from one volunteer at the start of September 2021 to several more located around the world by the end of April 2022. Plans for this were outlined in this post. The progress report for these plans was posted here in April 2022, and basically highlighted that the Mental Health Navigator had met its goals and set out next steps.
Many of the next steps were completed, including reorganizing both the website (with the help of Oliver Bramford) and the Mental Health Resources Table (with the help of Dee Kathuria) to be more navigable, ensuring we complied with all data protection laws in providing our services, and registering as an NGO. We experimented with providing the website and our articles in multiple languages and worked on creating guides to different types of therapy and to accessing mental health care in every country, but these were not priorities. Instead, we put accessibility in multiple languages on the back burner and linked to external mental health resources with information about finding care and different types of therapy and crisis lines around the world.
One of our next steps was also publishing the results of the second EA Mental Health Survey, which was conducted in 2021 with the goal of better understanding experiences with mental health among members of the EA community, therefore building upon the 2018 Mental Health Survey. It's results were posted on the EA Forum in May 2022. In 2023, the Mental Health Navigator collaborated with Rethink Wellbeing and High Impact Psychology on the 2023 EA Mental Health & Productivity Survey. It's results were posted here.
In 2023, we also worked on blogs and helpful posts, and with Dave Cortright on a series of posts intended as a mental health roadmap, something to help with conceptualizing one's mental health journey. Our first post in the series, Discovering Mental Health, was about what mental health is, what emotions are, self-regulating, and talking about mental health and emotions. The second post, Relationships & Mental Health, was about relationships and self-care.
Advisory Service
Between 2021 and 2023, our biggest priority was setting up the Advisory Service for success. This was designed to be something where we would meet one-on-one with anyone looking for help and essentially provide mental health first aid. After receiving professional legal and financial guidance, as well as guidance from the founder of the Hub of Hope in the UK, we decided it would be best to move forward as not just an NGO, but as a UK-based charity. While functioning as an NGO, we began working through our waitlist, as highlighted in our January 2023 update on the EA Forum. In September 2023 (the date of our last Forum post), we wrote that we had opened our Advisory Service to everyone, and were actively seeking UK-based volunteers to help with the Advisory Service (restricted to UK-based volunteers per legal guidance).
In October 2023, we became a registered charity in the UK, added MentNav as a trade name, created a new logo, and reformatted our website. Our Board of Trustees included Lynette Bye, Inga Grossmann, and Emily Jennings, with Lynette responsible for the Providers Table, Inga responsible for community outreach, and Emily responsible for admin work, the Advisory Service, and the Mental Health Resources Data Bank.
Things were going along well with the Advisory Service until a series of unfortunate events unfolded. Not long after our charity registration was complete, we lost the majority of the support for our Advisory Service, as volunteers moved on to new jobs and no longer had time to volunteer. Due to budget constraints, we were not able to onboard more volunteers (it was £400-500 to recruit and train a single Advisory Service volunteer), and due to personal events, Emily was not able to sustain the Advisory Service by herself. It therefore permanently closed in early 2024, and those who had scheduled appointments or were actively working with the Advisory Service were notified.
2024-2025 - Quiet Phase
Between late 2023 and early 2025, two of our Trustees experienced personal crises that prevented them from fully engaging with their responsibilities. Admin work was taken care of, and new entries were made for both the Providers table and the Mental Health Resources table, but not much else changed, and no posts were made on the EA Forum. Posts were occasionally made on our LinkedIn page, but our website has basically remained in maintenance mode, and updated every couple of months or so.
Current Plans
At this time, MentNav has web pages dedicated to the following:
- A page listing all known mental health resources created by the Effective Altruism Community: https://www.mentnav.org/from-effective-altruism
- Crisis information (including hotlines around the world, information from the US's NAMI and the UK's Mind on how to get help during a crisis, and information from NAMI, Mind, and the American Psychological Association on how to support someone experiencing a crisis): https://www.mentnav.org/crisis-support
- Information about learning to support someone struggling with their mental health: https://www.mentnav.org/providing-support
- Information about looking for care, better understanding what mental health resources are available, and getting an idea of where to begin on your mental health care journey: https://www.mentnav.org/finding-care
- A data bank of free, low-cost, and sliding scale mental health resources: https://www.mentnav.org/resources
Advisory Service
There are no plans to revive the Advisory Service. We have considered creating and implementing a virtual agent to help people navigate our website and assist with mental health first aid as a sort of replacement for the Advisory Service, but it is not clear that this would actually be helpful. Since the Advisory Service's closure, LLMs have become mainstream and increasingly useful for finding information about mental health resources, and the AirTables on both eamentalhealthnavigator.com and mentnav.org have been made to make filtering for providers and resources an easy self-service. While it might have been helpful to have someone EA-friendly to be there as a validating presence and to speak with regarding what one is experiencing, ultimately, an Advisory Service volunteer would signpost to a crisis hotline (for emergencies), warmline (for when you need someone to listen), or helpline (for when you're looking for information), or one of the resources listed on the From Effective Altruism page of the Mental Health Navigator website.
Mental Health Resources Data Bank
There has been a debate for some time within the Mental Health Navigator concerning how EA-specific the Mental Health Resources Data Bank should be, and what that actually means. How would you know if a mental health resource, such as a book, app, or community centre, was EA-specific? The data bank volunteers often encountered this question when searching for resources to add. When setting the criteria for inclusion for the data bank, it was decided that what made something EA-specific was the source of the information (who wrote or created it, and their approach) and the location of the resource (Was it geographically neutral? Or was it physically located near places listed in the EA Hub?).
However, it might be prudent to caution against an over-emphasis on a resource being EA-specific, especially given that there are multiple ways to take care of one's mental health, and what might help one person may not help someone else, even if they do share the same or similar values. One person might experience severe symptoms that are best treated by a psychologist or even psychiatrist, while someone else might experience low mood, but may not need to see a psychologist, and could instead benefit from visiting a community centre and meeting with a peer counselor. Maybe a self-help workbook would work best for someone else. Maybe one person would find anti-anxiety medication helpful, but another would not do well on anti-anxiety medications and find acupuncture helpful instead.
Ultimately, the Mental Health Resources data bank is meant to help people find new ideas for what could help their specific situation while being low-cost, and not all of what is helpful will necessarily be EA-specific. For instance, if someone is sexually assaulted in Oxford (England), they may find Survivor Space Oxfordshire helpful. This is a local charity that provides free counseling, support groups, and a psychoeducation course that offers a safe space for survivors to explore the impact of sexual violence on their life, and learn how to cope with the emotional and physical effects of trauma. As another example, someone trying to work through low self-esteem might find Overcoming Low Self-Esteem: A Self-Help Guide Using Cognitive Behavioural Techniques by psychologist Melanie Fennell helpful. These are the types of resources that can be helpful, but not always the first ones that come to mind.
Going forward, the Mental Health Navigator will no longer be EA-specific. We will continue to expand our list of free or low-cost mental health resources, and will continue to ensure resources listed are creditable and reputable, but we will also now transition to a more global approach. Our website will continue to be accessible via https://mentnav.org and https://mentalhealthnavigator.co.uk, and we can always be reached at info@mentnav.org.
That said, we recognize the importance of there being a place for EA-specific resources, which brings us to the next section of this post.
Providers Table
Since the Mental Health Resources Data Bank is no longer EA-specific, but the Providers Table is, we have decided to split the website. This has come at a time when we were looking for the next person to manage the Providers Table.
Julia Wise has been a constant source of support and guidance for the Mental Health Navigator since its inception, and is well-placed to continue ensuring the Providers Table remains a helpful resource specifically for members of the Effective Altruism community. She has kindly agreed to take over managing the Providers Table once again, and it is now housed under its own domain here: https://www.eamentalhealthnavigator.com/, where it is now split into one table for mental health providers and one table for coaches. A webpage listing mental health resources created by members of the Effective Altruism community is also available on this website at https://www.eamentalhealthnavigator.com/resources.
MentNav will continue to link to the website specific to effective altruism, though the "Providers" tab has now been removed, and the "From Effective Altruism" tab will no longer be available on mentnav.org in a few weeks' time.