Final Report Summary - HRES (Health Resilience and Economic Shocks: Analysis of Quasi-Natural Experiments Using Multi-Level Modelling)
Economic shocks associated with economic recessions pose substantial threats to mental health. These adverse impacts can be ameliorated, and in some cases completely mitigated, through investments in active labour market programmes and social capital. Additionally, large budgetary reductions to social protection systems in the context of economic crises can exacerbate these impacts by undermining social support systems. When large reductions take place to preventive health systems, they pose risks of resurgent infectious diseases including HIV and TB as well as vaccine-preventable diseases, such as measles, as well as of suicides, heart attacks, alcohol-related deaths and other so-called 'deaths of despair'.