Using data across countries and over time we show that women are unhappier than men in unhappiness and negative affect equations, irrespective of the measure used - anxiety, depression, fearfulness, sadness, loneliness, anger - and they have more days with bad mental health and more restless...

Across many studies subjective well-being follows a U-shape in age, declining until people reach middle-age, only to rebound subsequently. Ill-being follows a mirror-imaged hump-shape. But this empirical regularity has been replaced by a monotonic decrease in illbeing by age. The reason for the...

We show the incidence of mental ill-health has been rising especially among the young in the years and especially so in Scotland. The incidence of mental ill-health among young men in particular, started rising in 2008 with the onset of the Great Recession and for young women around 2012. The...

We examine the price of treating episodes of acute phase major depression over the 1991-1996 time period. We combine data from a large retrospective medical claims data base (MarketScanTM, from the MedStat Group) with clinical literature and expert clinical opinion elicited from a two-state...

This paper is concerned with the economics of mental health. We argue that mental health economics is like health economics only more so: uncertainty and variation in treatments are greater; the assumption of patient self-interested behavior is more dubious; response to financial incentives such...

We use data on all middle and high school-aged children who survived a mass shooting incident on July 22, 2011 in Utoya, Norway, to understand how such events affect survivors, their families, and their peers. Using a difference-in-differences design to compare survivors to a matched control...

We use rich administrative data from Denmark to assess medical theories that autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a heritable condition transmitted through underlying parental skills. Positing that occupational choices reflect skills, we create two separate occupation-based skill measures and find...

Focusing on bipolar disorder (BD), we investigate the link between mental health, creativity, and wealth. Analyzing population data for Denmark, we find that people with BD are more likely to be musicians, but less likely to hold other creative jobs than the population. Healthy siblings of...

A generous safety net may improve mental health outcomes and stress-related health behaviors for single mothers by promoting financial security, but stigma and hassle associated with welfare use could offset some of these gains. We use a simulated safety net eligibility approach that accounts...

Four million Native Americans who identify as single race live in the USA. Another three million identify as Native American in combination with another race. Yet they are rarely the focus of detailed research. We provide the first evidence that levels of consistently poor mental health, or...