Overview of the EPA guidance paper

Abstract

After several decades of Market Faith in Western societies and the most severe financial crash several generations has known, there has not really been a serious re-examination of the role of markets and money in our society. A market economy may be a valuable and effective tool for organizing productive activity. The problem is whether we have become a “market society”. That is, if the economic values have been transplanted to the whole of society – not only economic life – and we have become a monetized society: a society where just about everything is up for sale. That's to say, a way of life where market relations and market incentives and market values come to dominate all aspects of life. Paradoxically, it is possible that the economic crisis has only increased this trend. Administrations at different levels – European, States, Local… – have demanded tremendous sacrifices from the population intended to save the financial system, but on the way sacrificing a Welfare state that took decades to build. In this presentation, we will review the mental health consequences of the current economic crisis. Also it examines how the change in social values and sweeping assertion of economic values can affect the way we think about Mental Health and Psychiatric Care.

Disclosure of interest

The author has not supplied his declaration of competing interest.