American Economic Review: Insights
ISSN 2640-205X (Print) | ISSN 2640-2068 (Online)
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy among Ghana's Rural Poor Is Effective Regardless of Baseline Mental Distress
American Economic Review: Insights
vol. 4,
no. 4, December 2022
(pp. 527–45)
(Complimentary)
Abstract
We study the impact of group-based cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for individuals selected from the general population of poor households in rural Ghana (N = 7,227). Results from one to three months after the program show strong impacts on mental and perceived physical health, cognitive and socioemotional skills, and economic self-perceptions. These effects hold regardless of baseline mental distress. We argue that this is because CBT can improve well-being for a general population of poor individuals through two pathways: reducing vulnerability to deteriorating mental health and directly increasing cognitive capacity and socioemotional skills.Citation
Barker, Nathan, Gharad Bryan, Dean Karlan, Angela Ofori-Atta, and Christopher Udry. 2022. "Cognitive Behavioral Therapy among Ghana's Rural Poor Is Effective Regardless of Baseline Mental Distress." American Economic Review: Insights, 4 (4): 527–45. DOI: 10.1257/aeri.20210612Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- D12 Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
- I12 Health Behavior
- I15 Health and Economic Development
- I31 General Welfare; Well-Being
- I32 Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
- O12 Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
- O18 Economic Development: Urban, Rural, Regional, and Transportation Analysis; Housing; Infrastructure