Economics of Mental Health and Homelessness
ECON 1333
Subject & Catalog Number
Course Information
Description
How does society influence mental health? How does mental health influence the economy? How do economic theory and econometrics illuminate, and obfuscate, the challenges of mental illness? Mental health has quickly become one of the most important topics in global policymaking. Yet the links between influential fields of social science – especially economics – and behavioral medicine remain underdeveloped. This course will first explore the frontier of concepts in psychopathology, including perspectives from rational choice theory which are both limiting and illuminating in the ongoing quest to characterize mental health and mental illness. The course will then turn to the social and economic drivers of mental health. Covering topics that include deaths of despair and the U.S. opioid epidemic, conspicuous consumption and income-wellbeing relationship, social media and American teen distress, our general state of misery despite unprecedented material affluence, this course will systematically investigate the influences of society on mental health. Unlike most courses on mental health in other departments or medical schools, the syllabus will uncover unique empirical insights produced by the field of economics, and review in detail the econometric techniques used in these studies. Third, we will turn to the influences of mental health on society. We will consider extreme outcomes in housing markets such as homelessness and its relationship to severe mental illness. We examine classical approaches in economics to the housing market and homelessness, including new insights from behavioral health and transnational perspectives. Finally, we will turn to the roll of interventions. From pharmacotherapy, new interventional techniques (ECT, TMS, esketamine), therapy, nutrition, to health system organization, ACT teams, and permanent supportive housing, we will consider the potential and limitations in current societal responses to mental illness. We end with a consideration of the goals of economic policy, and examine how a focus on enhancing human mental wellbeing may offer unique policy opportunities in climate change, political psychology and growth policy.
Recommended Prep
Course Prerequisites: Introductory Micro (Ec 10a) and Calculus (Math 1a or equivalent) are prerequisites for the class, or permission of the instructor.
Available for Harvard Cross Registration
NOTE: This course requires additional sections; you will be prompted to choose secondary components during the Add to Cart process
