Mental health in the era of economic crises: an analysis of risks and support strategies

Abstract

Economic crises bring not only falling incomes and rising uncertainty but also a measurable deterioration of population mental well-being, while the nature of this link remains contested: some models treat it as a direct dose-dependent reaction to material decline, others introduce intermediate variables of individual and group coping. The aim of the study is to quantify the psychosocial risks generated by macroeconomic instability and to systematise mental-health support strategies by level of intervention. Drawing on secondary data of the World Health Organization, Rosstat and the Bank of Russia for 2019–2026, an author's model of a composite psychosocial risk index is constructed, aggregating inflationary pressure, the cost of borrowed funds, the dynamics of real incomes, labour-market tension and the level of economic uncertainty. The computation reveals two qualitatively different profiles of stress load: the acute shock of 2022 with an index value of 71.6 and the prolonged period of high borrowing costs in 2024–2025 holding steady at about 60. Over the same period the global prevalence of mental disorders exceeded one billion people, and the associated economic losses reached the order of one trillion dollars per year. The leading rise of anxiety and depressive states relative to employment dynamics indicates that mental well-being responds less to unemployment as such than to subjectively experienced financial insecurity and a contracting planning horizon.