Piketty to speak on inequality at NHH
Thomas Piketty gives «The Sandmo Lecture on Public Policy» on Friday 9 June at NHH Norwegian School of Economics.
Janet Currie to speak on child mental health
`The belief that mental health problems are suddenly skyrocketing, tends to overshadow the fact that these problems have always been common´, Professor Janet Currie says. She gives the Sandmo Lecture at NHH 28 May.
`Janet Currie is considered a pioneer in the economic analysis of child development´, Kjell G. Salvanes says. He is Professor at Department of Economics, Deputy Director at FAIR and organizes the Sandmo Lecture.
On Tuesday 28 May Currie gives The Sandmo Lecture On Public Policy. Her lecture The Economics of child mental health starts at 10:00 (in AUD N) and will be followed by a Q&A-session.
Mental health problems suddenly skyrocketing?
`The belief that mental health problems are suddenly skyrocketing, perhaps due to COVID or social media, tends to overshadow the fact that mental health problems have always been common. In rich countries they have been the leading cause of working days lost for decades´, Professor Currie says.
Salvanes recommends that everyone, both students and staff, attend the lecture by Currie:
`She has conducted groundbreaking research on how various factors such as policy decisions, environmental conditions, and health systems influence child development. Her major focus has been how we should think about children from an economic perspective´, Salvanes says.
Janet Currie
Janet Currie is the Henry Putnam Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University and Professor II at the Department of Economics, NHH. Her current research focuses on socioeconomic differences in health and access to health care, environmental threats to health, the important role of mental health, and the long-run impact of health problems in pregnancy and early childhood.
Currie is not only well-known in academic circles. Two years ago, she visited President Biden at the White House, where she briefed him on the effects of lead exposure on children.
Heated debate in Norway
What makes this year's lecture particularly relevant is that Currie is aware of the discussion that took place in Norway in 2023. The heated debate about students' mental health was triggered by a survey that showed that over half of the students had a mental disorder last year. The findings are also presented in Lancet Regional Health - Europe.
`The article in The Lancet by Sivertsen et al. finds alarmingly high rates of mental health problems among Norwegian students 18-35 years old: 40 percent of women and 26 percent of men were found to have a disorder. While high, these rates are not out of line with what other studies have found´, Janet Currie says.
Looking at specific disorders, they find for example that 17 percent of women and 11 percent of men report depression in the past 30 days.
12 percent taking anti-depressants
`To provide some context, in the U.S. about 12 percent of the adult population is taking anti-depressants at any point in time. As shown in the figure below, in the U.S. General Social Survey around 40 percent of employed adults report that they had some days in the past month when their mental health was “not good”´, Currie says.
In the US, the fraction of people with self-reported bad mental health days is high but stable over time. This observation raises an important question, according to Professor Currie.
Is the Lancet article uncovering a recent increase in mental health problems, or a high underlying rate which is only now being recognized?
`Unfortunately, it is impossible to tell because Sivertsen et al. are using a self-administered questionnaire. In previous studies using similar questionnaires, the instruments were administered face-to-face by clinicians. It is possible that people respond differently on self-administered questionnaires´.
The new spotlight on mental health
Another potential issue, according to Currie, is a relatively low response rate of 35.1 percent of potential respondents – possibly people with mental health problems were somewhat more likely to respond.
The new spotlight on mental health and rapid declines in stigma may encourage the recognition of mental health problems as a part of the human condition.
`We may come to think of mental health problems as akin to other illnesses such as influenza. Many people get the flu at some point, so lifetime prevalence is high. Some people recover on their own, other people become very sick but get better, and many people die of flu every year. The important social response is greater attention to prevention, timely diagnosis, and better treatment, Janet Currie concludes.