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1. A turning point or a point of no return? -- 2. The growth delusions -- 3. United we spend -- 4. Chains of the free world -- 5. Market mediocracies -- 6. The market greed doctrine -- 7. Divided we fail -- 8. Out of control -- 9. State of political inertia -- 10. Progress or collapse.

Background: Evidence exists supporting the impact of the Great Recession on health-related behaviors internationally, though few studies are available concerning the Italian population. Aim: To assess the impact of the late 2000s economic crisis on health-related behaviors linked to population mental health in Italy. Methods: Descriptive study. Health indicators came from the Italian Institute of Statistics database (years 2000–2015). Statistics performed by means of linear regression models. Results: Increased smokers (β = 1.68, p = .03), heavy smokers, that is, people smoking 11–20 cigarettes per day (β = 2.18, p = .04) or more than 20 cigarettes per day (β = 1.04, p < .01) and mean number of smoked cigarettes per day (β = 0.56, p = .02) were noticeable. Also, prevalence of overweight increased (β = 0.91, p = .04), while the Italian families' expenditure for alcoholic beverages decreased (β = –812.80, p = .01). Alcohol consumption decreased (β = –0.60, p < .01), especially in men (β = –0.95, p < .01); binge drinking increased in years 2009–2010. No change was noticeable in the diet indicators collected. Conclusion: The economic crisis may have increased smoking, overweight and binge drinking in Italy (though data on the latter phenomenon are not conclusive), and reduced overall alcohol consumption.

Objectives: To investigate whether low perceived organisational injustice predicts heavy drinking among employees. Methods: Data from the prospective occupational cohort study, the 10-Town Study, related to 15 290 Finnish public sector local government employees nested in 2432 work units, were used. Non-drinkers were excluded. Procedural, interactional and total organisational justice, heavy drinking (>=210 g of absolute alcohol per week) and other psychosocial factors were determined by means of questionnaire in 2000-2001 (phase 1) and 2004 (phase 2). Multilevel logistic regression analyses taking into account for the hierarchical structure of the data were conducted and adjustments were made for sex, age, socio-economic position, marital status, baseline heavy drinking, psychological distress and other psychosocial risk factors such as job strain and effort/reward imbalance. Results: After adjustments, participants who reported low procedural justice at phase 1 were about 1.2 times more likely to be heavy drinkers at phase 2 compared with their counterparts with high justice. Low perceived justice in interpersonal treatment and low perceived total organisational justice were associated with an elevated prevalence of heavy drinking only in the socio-demographics adjusted model. Conclusions: This is the first longitudinal study to show that low procedural justice is weakly associated with an increased likelihood of heavy drinking.