Tackling Europe’s mental health crisis

Dimitrios Vartzopoulos | 20th July 2022 | Brussels, Comment
Headache

Mental health crisis is a complex problem, but there are simple things Europeans can do to cope

Much has been said and written about anxiety and mental health crisis in the wake of COVID-19. This is an important and welcome discussion: the effects of lockdowns, isolation, and the profound uncertainty about the future continue to take a toll on our communities and cannot be left unaddressed. I say this as a practicing psychiatrist, sitting parliamentarian, and former deputy minister of health. This sense of anxiety and feelings of despair are especially acute in my native Greece, and not just because of the pandemic. When COVID-19 threw the world into chaos in early 2020, our nation was still healing from the financial crisis that hit our country exceptionally hard. The virus added to what was already a palpable collective sense of hopelessness after a decade of the most severe economic crisis any European nation has ever faced. Greece has been in a recovery process from high unemployment, bleak prospects for the future, and deeply wounded national pride when the first coronavirus...

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