Psychological interventions for people affected by the COVID-19 epidemic

By Li Duan, G. Zhu. Lancet psychiatry, 2020

1,496 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic has now spread across China for over a month. The National Health Commission has issued guidelines for emergency psychological crisis intervention for people affected by COVID-19. Medical institutions and universities across China have opened online platforms to provide psychological counselling services for patients, their family members, and other people affected by the epidemic. However, Xiang and colleagues, claim that the mental health needs of patients with confirmed COVID-19, patients with suspected infection, quarantined family members, and medical personnel have been poorly handled. The organisation and management models for psychological interventions in China must be improved. Several countries in the west (eg, the UK and USA) have established procedures for psychological crisis interventions to deal with public health emergencies. Theoretical and practical research on psychological crisis interventions in China commenced relatively recently. In 2004, the Chinese Government issued guidelines on strengthening mental health initiatives, and psychological crisis interventions have dealt with public health emergencies—eg, after the type A influenza outbreak and the Wenchuan earthquake—with good results. During the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic, several psychological counselling telephone helplines were opened for the public, and quickly became important mechanisms in addressing psychological issues. However, the organisation and management of psychological intervention activities have several problems. First, little attention is paid to the practical implementation of interventions. Overall planning is not adequate. When an outbreak occurs, no authoritative organisation exists to deploy and plan psychological intervention activities in different regions and subordinate departments. Hence, most medical departments start psychological interventional activities independently without communicating with each other, thereby wasting mental health resources, and failing patients in terms of a lack of a timely diagnosis, and poor follow-up for treatments and evaluations. Second, the cooperation between community health services and mental-health-care institutions in some provinces and cites in China has been decoupled. After the assessment of the mental health states of individuals affected by the epidemic, patients cannot be assigned according to the severity of their condition and difficulty of treatment to the appropriate department or professionals for timely and reasonable diagnosis and treatment. And after remission of the viral infection, patients cannot be transferred quickly from a hospital to a community health service institution to receive continuous psychological treatment. Finally, owing to a shortage of professionals, the establishment of psychological intervention teams in many areas is not feasible. Teams might consist of psychological counsellors, nurses, volunteers, or teachers majoring in psychology and other related fields, with no professional and experienced psychologists and psychiatrists. One individual often has multiple responsibilities, which can reduce the effectiveness of interventions. This situation can be resolved by improving relevant policies, strengthening personnel training, optimising organisational and management policies, and constantly reviewing experiences in practice. In the National Health Commission guidelines, key points were formulated for different groups, including patients with confirmed and suspected infections, medical care and related personnel, those who had close contacts with patients (eg, family members, colleagues, friends), people who refused to seek medical treatment, susceptible groups (eg, older people, children, and pregnant women), and the general public. With disease progression, clinical symptoms become severe and psychological problems in infected patients will change; therefore, psychological intervention measures should be targeted and adapted as appropriate. Studies have confirmed that individuals who have experienced public health emergencies still have varying degrees of stress disorders, even after the event is over, or they have been cured and discharged from hospital, indicating these individuals should not be ignored. Therefore, we should consider the disease Lancet Psychiatry 2020

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/176b6b8c0568086b873c12b9938d6bcf61f830ef

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Clinical Psychology

In Social Psychology

Citations in the corpus

COVID-19 and mental health: A review of the existing literature (2020, background): “With reference to more specific therapeutic strategies, proposals include the development of teams of specialists qualified to address emotional distress (Duan and Zhu, 2020) ; the training of community health personnel in basic aspects of mental health care (Duan and Zhu, 2020) ; the use of online ”
The psychological impact of COVID-19 on the mental health in the general population (2020, background): “Many psychological problems and important consequences in terms of mental health including stress, anxiety, depression, frustration, uncertainty during COVID-19 outbreak emerged progressively.(4) Common psychological reactions related to the mass quarantine which was imposed in order to attenuate th”
Mobile shoppers’ response to Covid-19 phobia, pessimism and smartphone addiction: Does social influence matter? (2021, background): “Correspondingly, individuals recognize negative cognitive, affective, and behavioural responses to the Covid-19 pandemic, described by physical, mental, and emotional dysfunction that disrupts their usual activities and increasingly incite phobic reactions (Arpaci et al., 2020; Duan and Zhu, 2020; L”
Fear, Stress, Resilience and Coping Strategies during COVID-19 in Spanish University Students (2021, background): “A relevant study indicates that alarming news delivered through ICT can simultaneously affect the emotional dimension in a negative way, causing higher levels of anxiety, stress, frustration, and discomfort due to information overload and the uncertainty raised by the situation [25].”
The panic buying behavior of consumers during the COVID-19 pandemic: Examining the influences of uncertainty, perceptions of severity, perceptions of scarcity, and anxiety (2021, background): “There is no doubt that the fear and uncertainty that have emerged from the COVID-19 outbreak have brought about psychological changes in terms of consumer behavior (Duan and Zhu, 2020; Meyer, 2020).”
Psychosocial impact of COVID-19 (2020, neutral): “Most of the cases, clinical psychiatrists, psychologists, and mental health social workers are not encouraged to enter isolation wards or confinement centers under strict infection control measures [10,122].”
Prevalence and correlates of PTSD and depressive symptoms one month after the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic in a sample of home-quarantined Chinese university students (2020, neutral): “However, it is expected that the need for psychological intervention will gradually increase and prompt rapid and urgent research on the associated psychological effects (Duan and Zhu, 2020).”
An investigation of mental health status of children and adolescents in china during the outbreak of COVID-19 (2020, neutral): “However, due to the long period of separation from the outside world, the impact of multi-channel negative information, excessive fears of being infected, and even the shame and guilt for the infection, many people across China, particularly residents at the epicenter of the outbreak in Wuhan, are e”
The experiences of health-care providers during the COVID-19 crisis in China: a qualitative study (2020, background): “20 Psychological care was mainly provided by frontline health-care providers, who had heavy workloads and did not have professional training in mental health care.”
Are You Tired of Working amid the Pandemic? The Role of Professional Identity and Job Satisfaction against Job Burnout (2020, background): “However, the teachers’ work and its quality requirements are increasingly demanding in the face of the impact of the epidemic situation [5].”
Natural Language Processing Reveals Vulnerable Mental Health Support Groups and Heightened Health Anxiety on Reddit During COVID-19: Observational Study (2020, background): “5%) are especially high among health care workers [2].”
Unprecedented disruption of lives and work: Health, distress and life satisfaction of working adults in China one month into the COVID-19 outbreak (2020, neutral): “These papers are critical because across the world people who did not carry the virus epidemiologically but had their work and life disrupted to varying degrees (Duan and Zhu, 2020; Xiang et al., 2020; Bao et al., 2020) .”
Depression, Anxiety and Stress during COVID-19: Associations with Changes in Physical Activity, Sleep, Tobacco and Alcohol Use in Australian Adults (2020, background): “Moreover, a number of reports have highlighted the need for rapid and comprehensive responses to increasing mental health needs during COVID-19 [3,5]; however, it is expected this support will need to be maintained for some years to come given the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic.”