Today.Az, Azerbaijan
Jan 4 2009

Azad Isazade: `Economic crisis in Azerbaijan may lead to nervous
breakdown among most of our citizens’

04 January 2009 [18:11] – Today.Az

Day.Az interview with famous psychologist Azad Isazade.

– What can you say about the past year of 2008 in the psychological
sense it had for the Azerbaijani citizens?

– First of all, Azerbaijan held presidential elections last
year. Moreover, the elections were also held in a number of countries,
with which our country have important relations including the United
States, Russia, Armenia, Georgia, Turkey.

In other words, the year was full of events in the sense of electoral
processes, whose results could influence our country. But as the
results of these elections were predicted, they did not have any
influence on the deterioration or improvement of the overall
psychological state of the citizens of our country. It all occurred as
it was expected to occur, which means that there were no grounds for
excessive hopes or disappointment. The August Russian-Georgian war and
the global financial crisis became more important in the sense of
influence on the overall psychological state of our citizens. Both
these events carried a negative impact on the citizens of Azerbaijan.

For example, after the August Russian-Georgian war a part of our
citizens, who hoped for the return of the Armenian-occupied Nagorno
Karabakh, clearly understood that in this changing world there occur
situations when little depends not only on the simple citizens of
Azerbaijan but also on the leadership of Azerbaijan and Armenia for
peace can always be sacrificed in the geopolitical confrontation
between superpowers, tending to establish their hegemony in our
region. The clear understanding of this fact caused the worsening of
the psychological state in our country.

The global financial crisis, which has started to be felt in
Azerbaijan, even worsened all negative tendencies. Its expectation has
an extremely negative influence on the psychological state of our
citizens.

– What implications can this expectation of all negative consequences
of economic crisis have?

– On the first stage everything may content with the review of the
family budget and the striving to finish all economic accomplishments.
But this is only on the first stage. Further, the expectation of
economic crisis in Azerbaijan and its negative implications for each
of our citizens will naturally toughen and strain, creating a negative
psychological background for the citizens of the country. But if the
economic crisis comes to Azerbaijan and turns out to be serious
enough, it may cause a nervous breakdown among most of our citizens.

– How will the understanding of the inability to resist not only
possible significant deterioration of their material state due to
economic crisis but also understanding of their inability to settle a
number of housing problems including problems with electricity, gas
and water in our flats influence the psychological state of the
residents of our country?

– First of all, there are definite, though not significant, positive
changes in the issue of supply of gas, elecricity and water to the
population. Though no one can guarantee that all these insignificant
achievements will not disappear easily. But the overall complex
situation promotes adjustment of our people to hard life collissions.
Therefore, an average Azerbaijan is not depressed with his own
inability to change the situation for better. He starts to adjust to
this situation and live in his own, often a parralel world. And by our
national `duzeler’ (`everything will be o’k’) I can explain the fact
that local restaurants and other festivity houses and filled, though
implications of global financial crisis are obvious throughout the
world.

/Day.Az/

URL: