How do we make sense of numbers?

Last year when when the economic crisis loomed the Federal Reserve and Treasury Secretary urged Congress to approve a $700 billion bailout of struggling financial institutions.

I remember politicians and media going to great lengths to try and put this amount of money in context. What does $700 billion mean to me? How do I relate that to my standard of living? Every technique was used…

Shock - Its over twice the amount of all money given to all charitable organizations in the United States in any given year.
Comparison - There are about 300 million men, women, and children currently living in the United States, so the bailout is equal to roughly $2,300 per person
Arbitrary - an average public school classroom filled up about 70% (between 2/3 and 3/4) of the way with salt!

But perhaps the best technique to explain figures like $700 billion is not to go big, but to go small.

I recently came across the work of artist Toby Ng. One of his latest projects tries to make sense of global numbers by simplifying them - what would gloabl statistics mean if the world were a village of 100.

In the field of mental health we have the same problem of making sense of numbers. Often when numbers are too large they become intangible, inhernetly meaningless and are no longer able to appeal to a person’s emotions. How do we put into context that “only a small minority of the 450 million people suffering from a mental or behavioural disorders are receiving treatment”? (World Health Organization).

Mental illness can affect anyone regardless of sex, age, race, religion, ethnicity or socio-economic class. In any given year one in five people are estimated to suffer from a mental illness and the economic and social costs of these disorders is staggering.

Mental health and mental illness are complex issues. They are complex to understand and require complex solutions. But perhaps the best way to start the conversation about them is to present them simply.

(Note: The image below is my own creation - an homage to Tony’s art project)

~ D. Venn

Tags: International Mental Health

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 at 12:27 pm and is filed under International Mental Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.