ZAGREB, Dececmber 4, 2020 – The coronavirus pandemic has resulted in Croatia having a serious problem with citizens’ lack of trust in state institutions, the Jutarnji List daily says in its Friday issue.
Croatians are more or less satisfied with the work of the national COVID-19 response team even though only 30% of respondents who took part in a survey conducted in August and September this year said they were satisfied with it.
Citizens are even less satisfied with the work of other relevant institutions, and they are the least satisfied with the work of parliament (only 12% are satisfied) and the government (20%).
Since the autumn and winter of 2020 are a particularly challenging period in terms of the spread of the coronavirus infection, since citizens are exhausted by the process of dealing with the crisis and the government and other relevant stakeholders are expected to make responsible and demanding decisions to protect public health while preserving the economy, it is of key importance to invest effort to make citizens trust the relevant institutions and call on them to cooperate.
This is the conclusion of the first comprehensive survey of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the nation’s mental health and its social consequences.
The survey, financed by the Croatian Science Foundation and covering 1,060 respondents, was conducted by a team of psychologists, sociologists and political scientists as part of a research project dedicated to social recovery following the coronavirus crisis.
The project is headed by Professor Dinka Corkalo Biruski from the Psychology Department of the Zagreb Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.
A rather interesting finding is that roughly the same percentage of respondents said that they do not worry at all (15.3%) or worry very much (14.1%) about getting infected with coronavirus.
Also, two in three respondents said their current standard of living is the same as before the crisis, which makes it seem that in the period before the survey was conducted the crisis did not have a major impact on people’s assessment of their standard of living.
The poor fear the consequences of the pandemic the most.
The special circumstances citizens had to deal with during the pandemic are perceived as moderately stressful, with the uncertainty regarding the duration of the pandemic being the factor that causes the most stress, the daily says.
