Mental health as social indicator in times of crisis |
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| Coordinator 1 | Dr Kathrin Gärtner (FH Wiener Neustadt) |
| Coordinator 2 | Mr Stefan Dressler-Stross (FH Wiener Neustadt) |
| Coordinator 3 | Dr Thomas Leoni (FH Wiener Neustadt) |
| Coordinator 4 | Professor Ivo Ponocny (Modul University Vienna) |
The negative impact of social distancing and other measures implemented to prevent the spread of COVID-19 have increased public awareness for mental health and, in particular, the mental well-being of children and adolescents. Current developments and increasing levels of uncertainty (war, political instability and scarcity of resources) intensify the pressure on individuals and are most likely to threaten their mental health. To investigate such claims, it is important to firstly, gain insights into the valid measuring of mental health and secondly, explore the relationship with other measures to determine mental health’s eligibility and suitability as a social indicator in times of crisis.
In their action plan till 2020 the WHO stressed the need for evidence and research regarding valid measurements and implementations of mental health (2013). Some large-scale social surveys (for example the European Health Interview Survey) attempt to measure mental health and some surveys especially address influences on mental health caused by COVID-19 (for example Eurofound’s “Living, working and COVID19”), while other surveys gather data concerning subjective well-being and general life satisfaction. A recent scoping review by the Robert Koch Institute (2021) resulted in a total of 192 potential indicators of mental health. This vast number of possibilities obviously needs further research.
For this session we encourage contributions that address different ways to measure mental health (e.g. short scales) and experiences gathered in social surveys addressing – both primarily and not – mental health. We are especially interested in topics such as: mental health scales as survey mode, interviewer effects, different measures for different impairments and well-being as proxies for mental health, and relationships between these variables in a general population.