Mental Health, Social and Cultural Welfare in the Post COVID-19 Era: Challenges, Opportunities, and Paradigm

The tragic COVID-19 syndemic is destined to profoundly change health systems globally. Over the past two years, the capacity and resilience of health care and social welfare systems have proven to be crucial factors in addressing the direct and indirect effects of SARS-CoV-2. Additionally, in mental health, the value of territorial and proximity public health, capable of multidisciplinary interventions centred on the concept of “budget of health”, recovery, and supported housing as overcoming long-term care structures, has further emerged. Growing demands for mental health, urgent social protection, and better public health systems have posed critical challenges in both economic and service delivery capacities. This Special Issue aims to collect papers capable of accurately analysing the current situation and offering useful tools to policy makers to imagine and redesign the future of health policies in terms of mental health, cultural, and social welfare. Is there a need for new models to respond to the new challenges in mental health? How can public health interventions be organized to implement and protect mental and global health? What types of multidisciplinary intervention are necessary to ensure the involvement of communities and the territory to promote mental health and the fight against stigma? What new rehabilitation perspectives could arise from the interaction between culture and mental health? What actions are needed to implement mental health, starting from a social welfare approach? What are the new models for a sustainable mental health system from an economic point of view? What are the perspectives and actions needed to promote gender mental health? What is the role of a psychodynamic approach in mental health in the post-COVID-19 era? What are the perspectives from a social justice point of view in mental health policies?