IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aerins/v4y2022i4p527-45.html

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy among Ghana's Rural Poor Is Effective Regardless of Baseline Mental Distress

Author

Listed:
  • Nathan Barker
  • Gharad Bryan
  • Dean Karlan
  • Angela Ofori-Atta
  • Christopher Udry

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Nathan Barker & Gharad Bryan & Dean Karlan & Angela Ofori-Atta & Christopher Udry, 2022. "Cognitive Behavioral Therapy among Ghana's Rural Poor Is Effective Regardless of Baseline Mental Distress," American Economic Review: Insights, American Economic Association, vol. 4(4), pages 527-545, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aerins:v:4:y:2022:i:4:p:527-45
    DOI: 10.1257/aeri.20210612
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aeri.20210612
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aeri.20210612.appx
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aeri.20210612.ds
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1257/aeri.20210612?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Eric Edmonds & Priya Mukherjee & Nikhilesh Prakash & Nishith Prakash & Shwetlena Sabarwal, 2025. "Talk Therapy and Human Capital in Adolescence: Evidence from a Low-Resource Setting," CESifo Working Paper Series 11888, CESifo.
    2. repec:osf:socarx:q85ux_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Justine Herve & Subha Mani & Jere Behrman & Ramanan Laxminarayan & Arindam Nandi, 2025. "Intergenerational Mobility in Depression and Anxiety in India," PIER Working Paper Archive 25-001, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
    4. Banerjee, Ritwik & Blunch, Niels-Hugo & Cassese, Daniele & Datta Gupta, Nabanita & Pin, Paolo, 2024. "The Effectiveness of Teamwork for Student Academic Outcomes: Evidence from a Field Experiment," IZA Discussion Papers 17362, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior
    • I15 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Economic Development
    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being
    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • O18 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Urban, Rural, Regional, and Transportation Analysis; Housing; Infrastructure

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aerins:v:4:y:2022:i:4:p:527-45. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.