Social Distancing and Mental Health

Italy is one of the countries in the world most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, in terms of human lives and economic losses. In the first quarter of the year, the country's GDP decreased by 5.3% compared to the previous quarter, the worst performance ever. In this book, 34 experts analyze the immediate impact of COVID-19 on the Italian economy and show how the emergency can prove to be an extraordinary opportunity to break the reform stalemate and plant the seeds for a sustainable recovery. At a juncture when a lot of dangerous noise surrounds discussions about public policies and endangers the very fabric of democracy, the contributions of this book are scholarly, value-neutral, and evidence-based, with the unavoidable limitations of high levels of uncertainty surrounding the epidemiological horizons, insufficient and generally low-quality data, and relatively scarce clarity concerning the policy framework. The goal of this book is to shed light on what happened in Italy during the COVID-19 epidemic, or during an extremely important moment in national history, from various points of view: from what the answer revealed on the state of the economy, the underlying policy forces, the long-term prospects.