Epidemics, mental health, and public trust

Abstract

We study the joint disease diffusion and mental health evolution in a context where individuals, subject to mobility restrictions, decide about their daily mobility and update their trust in the efficiency of public containment policies. Mental health and trust determine preferences for mobility and how successful current and future epidemic control policies are. Using French data covering the two first lockdown episodes in this country, we estimate the model using high-frequency and geolocalised data on mobility and psychotropic drugs, allowing for a large degree of heterogeneity at an individual level. We show that containment policies lead gradually to poorer mental health, driven by the accumulation of reduced mobility periods and a progressive distrust in the efficiency of the policy, undermining future ones.   

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