Depression and grief as a result of economic and financial crises: the example of Greece and some generalizations

摘要

Macroeconomic changes such as economic depression and stock market crashes can have an impact on private life, mood and attitudes toward individuals and, by this, on the macroeconomy. This paper deals with the mental health indicators depression and grief as a result of economic and financial crises. For this purpose, it refers to the seminal five phases of crisis response well known from psychology and applies them to the setting of Greece since the start of the most recent crisis. In this context, we differentiate between investors and the "normal" population and deal with important feedback effects from lower mental health to the macroeconomy. Finally, as these feedback effects tend to lead even deeper into macroeconomic trouble, a vicious cycle cannot be excluded given these findings. The paper also generalizes its considerations to the case of mental health effects of economic crises beyond the Greek case.