Take advantage of a pandemic to critically review some assumptions of our common thinking: Excellent healthcare and psychologists who treat discomfort

This contribution is inspired by an article published by a group of Italian doctors on Catalyst, New England Journal of Medicine, a few days after the declaration of a healthcare emergency in Italy. In that article, some areas of crisis in the Italian healthcare system in general and Lombardy in particular were highlighted, and the need for a rethinking of the territorial health model in a multi-professional sense was underlined. Following this solicitation, the present study analyzes the current state of the public health system on the basis of some parameters: the business process, the meanings of efficiency in public health, the myth of excellence. Downstream of this analysis, a possible working space for psychologists in a rethought public health is highlighted, as long as it goes beyond the collective call, which appears to be poorly developed, to employ psychologists in the treatment of social distress of a population that has had to practice living conditions rigidly devoted to isolation, with repercussions on people’s relational and economic life.