Seminar

Mental health and the COVID19

18 November 2021

Start time

5:00 am

Palazzo di Sociologia - Via Verdi 26, Trento

Vai alla mappa

Aula Kessler

Organizer:

Doctoral School of Social Sciences

Target audience:

Everyone

Attendance:

Free

Contact details:

school.socialsciences@unitn.it

Speaker:

Veronica Grembi, Associate Professor of Economics, Sapienza, University of Rome

Abstract

Relying on a unique survey of more than 15,000 respondents conducted from June to August 2020 in Italy, we show that priming religiosity in healthcare workers decreases the level of self-assessed mental distress experienced during the rst wave of the COVID-19.
Consistent with the idea that religiosity serves as a coping mechanism, this e ect is stronger for the more impacted categories (e.g., hospital workers) and for respondents facing more stressful situations, such as being reassigned due to the COVID-19 emergency or working in a COVID-19-related specialty (e.g., emergency care), among others. All things equal, the effect is stronger on nurses, who were the target of a media campaign identifying them as COVID-19 angels, than on physicians.

JEL Classification: I10, N34, Z12
Keywords: Healthcare Workers, Mental Wellbeing, COVID-19, Coping Mechanisms,
Religiosity.

Discussants:

Giuseppe Maria Ercolino, PhD student in Economics and Management
Mauro Martinelli, PhD student in Sociology and Social Research