The U.S. is in the middle of what many are calling a mental health crisis, one that, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, is particularly acute among young people. More people are talking about mental health, but one of the biggest challenges when it comes to addressing this global crisis is getting people to overcome the stigma of seeking help in the first place. Two Northeastern researchers set out to find a way to break through that barrier.
“The first thing we know about mental health is people just don’t reach out,” says Nishith Prakash, a professor of public policy and economics at Northeastern University. The results of their research, conducted in Nepal, a country with few resources to tackle issues around mental health and with even fewer outreach efforts underway, found that low-cost interventions over the phone that normalized mental health issues and featured a local celebrity as a role model were remarkably effective in increasing peoples’ willingness to seek help.
