Mental Health Optimisation and the Macro Environment I'm studying the below questions. I appreciate they're rather broad - the purpose of this post is to get guidance on where I might start. I'm hoping someone can provide more focused examples of related studies which will help me move forward.

To what extent does a high level sense of direction weigh on day to day mental health optimisation?

In other words...

How is the economy relevant to mental health optimisation and does progression at such a macro level support individual psychological health progression?

By 'high level sense of direction' I mean the level of optimism in our environment - whether that be from growing financial markets, an evolving political landscape, levels of world conflict etc. (I'm talking vision/risk appetite/optimism. Perhaps there is an academic term within the cognitive sciences for this? Behavioral Ecology?)

I'm looking to analyse how our global connectivity and processing of world news/events which highlight sometimes far-removed changes in our environment, directly impact our mental state.

Ideas:



Have there been any studies into the relationship between economic
performance and anxiety? Maybe the psychological outlook of Millenials who experienced a very difficult economic environment during 2007 to 2013 (credit
crisis) whilst trying to enter the workforce? Many didn't and lived
with parents longer, haven't bought houses etc..
Perhaps the relationship between proliferation of social media news services and psychological health?


Please provide reading suggestions and advise if I'm not using terms recognised in the realm of cognitive science/psychology. Please add relevant tags to my question as not sure where this fits in; looking to bridge two worlds here.
For a high-level overview, I usually start with Wikipedia.  Wikipedia is a peer-reviewed, community-contributed, comprehensive source of high-level information.  The user community has already done the work for us of aggregating large volumes of primary and secondary source material, digesting it for the reader, keeping it up to date, and ensuring a balanced approach. so it should meet your needs as a starting point of "where the most up to date/popular/most respected views" might be.  Wikipedia also provides links to related articles, and reference source materials that you can follow up on to dig deeper.  Any similar online encyclopaedia-style wiki would be fine too (eg, Scholarpedia) if you prefer.

The article on "Causes of mental disorders" has a section on environmental factors.  Some highlights:


  ... environmental causes are stressors that individuals deal with in
  everyday life. These stressors range from financial issues to having
  low self-esteem.
  ...
  The lower the socioeconomic status of an individual the higher the
  risk of mental illness. Impoverished people are actually two to three
  times more likely to develop mental illness than those of a higher
  economic class.
  ... there is a strong association between poverty and substance abuse.
  ... Problems in communities or cultures, including poverty,
  unemployment or underemployment, lack of social cohesion, and
  migration, have been associated with the development of mental
  disorders.


You may also be interested in the reverse effect - of mental health on the economy.  You can also use Wikipedia to research specific disorders, such as the effect of the economy on major depressive disorder (depression).  It's important to pay attention to cause and effect when doing this.  For example:


  Depression is often associated with unemployment and poverty. ...
  prevalence is in groups with stronger socioeconomic factors i.e.
  homelessness.


Read this carefully, as it doesn't mean that a bad economy causes depression, only that poverty and depression co-occur - it's equally likely that depression causes poverty than the other way around.  Having said that, there is strong evidence that economic health does affect rates of depression:


  Although reverse causation—poor mental health leading to lower
  earnings—is present, it is no longer considered the primary mechanism
  behind the association between income and health. Several longitudinal
  studies have specifically examined the relationship between depression
  and socioeconomic status and concluded that the causal direction runs
  from socioeconomic status to depression.


I hope that this is what you were looking for to get started.