education – are also associated with common psychological disorders in low and middle income countries (Patel et al. 1999; Patel and Kleinman, 2003).<sup>5</sup> To measure psychological well-being in Indonesia, IFLS adopted a short screening survey of psychological distress. The psychological health component of IFLS is not intended to diagnose a specific psychological illness _per se_ , but rather to assess the population prevalence of various symptoms of psychological distress. These symptoms are typically highly correlated with specific forms of psychological illness. The particular IFLS psychological health questions are adapted from the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) and attempt to measure symptoms of two globally common categories of psychiatric disorder- depression and anxiety (Goldberg, 1972). Appendix Table 1 presents the IFLS questions used in this study. They focus on general feelings of sadness or anxiety as well as specific symptoms of distress.<sup>6</sup> These questions have been translated and back-translated to ensure accuracy, as well as extensively tested in the field in order to ensure comprehension among study subjects. Appendix Table 1 also includes a question on self-perceived general health status. This standard health survey question is a summary measure of health that encompasses physical and non-physical domains of wellbeing. It provides a contrast with which to compare our markers of psycho-social well-being against a broader summary of health.

In terms of survey implementation, the psychological health questions were assessed in full in the 1993 and 1998 survey waves and a subset of the questions were assessed in the 2000 wave. (The subset is marked with an asterisk in Appendix Figure 1). For much of the following analysis, we exploit the panel nature of the data to contrast the general psychological health of each individual at two points in time, 1993 and 2000 (the 1998 results from the 25% sub-sample will also be used).

This seven year period brackets the financial, political and social crisis which, given its magnitude, is likely the dominant factor underlying changes in psychological health over this period. An advantage of using 1993 for comparison is that our estimates will not be contaminated by the impact of expectations regarding an impending crisis.

_Psychological distress, pre- and post-crisis_ We begin with an overview of our psychological well-being indicators before and after the onset of the 1997 crisis. Table 1 reports the overall prevalence of psychological distress in the population of

> 5 More recent research (Das et al., 2007) fails to find this coincident relationship between psychological health and low socio-economic status in five developing countries, although it does replicate the earlier findings in regards to demographic correlates.

> 6 The questions ask about a broader array of symptoms than that indicated by the DSM-IV and, although questions relate to symptoms of depression and anxiety, the prevalence of a symptom or multiple symptoms within an individual are not sufficient information to produce a diagnosis (Bir and Frank, 2001). Although validation studies with the US based GHQ have concluded that if a clustering of symptoms within an individual is identified, psychiatrists are likely to make a diagnosis (Goldberg, 1972), the IFLS data do not provide diagnostic information and we interpret out measures as indicative of general psychological well-being in the population.

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