Focus Areas Of Involvement
Aibtikar Foundation is initially choosing to focus on the areas of child empowerment and innovation in mental health because these are the areas where the founding family believes it can attain the highest social return on investment. These areas of focus can also produce positive externalities for other global issues including poverty and healthcare costs and access.
Child Empowerment
Providing children from disadvantaged backgrounds the opportunity to live a life beyond their predisposed circumstances has among the highest return on investment of all social causes.
Below are just some of the benefits of Child Empowerment:
Improved Mental Health
Improved Physical Health
Greater ability to maintain employment
Higher income potential
Greater ability to maintain a nuclear family later in life
All of these benefits not only improve the individual persons life, but the quality of life and economic strength of our collective society.
Innovation in Mental Health
According to the World Health Organization, one in four people in the world will be affected by mental or neurological disorders at some point in their lives, two thirds of whom never seek treatment, largely for reasons related to stigma. While treatments are readily available in many nations, the payment system generally incentivizes the lowest cost solutions, which are pharmaceuticals.
Many studies show that pharmaceuticals are most effective when paired with talk therapy. This is where the tension in the system lies because having a patient take the time to talk to a professional on a regular basis is a costly intervention. While the U.S. government has undertaken various initiatives aimed at this problem (including passage of the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Act), millions of Americans would stand to benefit from a different approach to this disease state.