Björn Nilsson published his paper “Hairdressers and well-being: Local services provision and mental health first response”, co-authored with Clémence Pougué Biyong, in the Journal of Development Economics, Volume 177, October 2025, 103528.
Abstract: Mental health is globally underfunded. In low-income settings, innovative and layman solutions may constitute alternatives to formal medical systems. We evaluate an innovative program training hairdressers to act as first responders to manifestations of mental health issues. 73 hairdressers were trained in active listening. We find some evidence that the training improved hairdresser-customer interactions, but found no effect on the mental health of customers. We also found that training worsened mental health outcomes for hairdressers, and speculate that this has to do with reduced stigma and improved self-evaluative capacities, showing that both customers and hairdressers updated their beliefs about mental health. These results suggest that training alone in a context with stigma and poor mental health awareness may not be enough to measurably improve mental health outcomes, and future similar interventions may want to consider combining training with subsidized access to care, at least in an initial phase.