Vicarious traumatization in the general public, members, and non-members of medical teams aiding in COVID-19 control

By Zhenyu Li, Jingwu Ge, Meiling Yang, Jianping Feng, Mei Qiao, Riyue Jiang, Jiangjiang Bi, Gaofeng Zhan, Xiaolin Xu, Long Wang and 14 more. medRxiv, 2020

1,010 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Since December 2019, more than 79,000 people have been diagnosed with infection of the Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). A large number of medical staff were dispersed for Wuhan city and Hubei province to aid COVID-19 control. Psychological stress, especially vicarious traumatization (VT) caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, should not be ignored. To address this concern, the study employed a total of 214 general public (GP) and 526 nurses to evaluate VT scores via a mobile app-based questionnaire. Results showed that the VT scores slightly increased across periods of aiding COVID-19 control, although no statistical difference was noted (P = 0.083). However, the study found lower scores for VT in nurses [median = 69; interquartile range (IQR) = 56-85] than those of the GP (median = 75.5; IQR = 62-88.3) (P = 0.017). In addition, the VT scores for front-line nurses (FLNs; median = 64; IQR = 52-75), including scores for physiological and psychological responses, were significantly lower than those of non-front-line nurses (nFLNs; median = 75.5; IQR = 63-92) (P < 0.001). Interestingly, the VT scores of the GP were significantly higher than those of the FLNs (P < 0.001). However, no statistical difference was observed compared with those of nFLNs (P > 0.05). Importantly, nFLNs are more likely to suffer from VT, which might be related to two factors, namely, gender [odds ratio (OR) = 3.1717; 95% confidence interval (CI) = 4.247-18.808; P = 0.002] and fertility [OR = 2.072; 95%CI = 0.626-24.533; P = 0.039]. Therefore, increased attention should be paid to the psychological problems of the medical staff, especially nFLNs, and GP under the situation of the spread and control of COVID-19. Early strategies that aim to prevent and treat VT in medical staff and GP are extremely necessary.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e9824bfce21ae0ff7f92700c9071fc4e4559e4c5

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Citations in the corpus

Psychosocial impact of COVID-19 (2020, neutral): “Another large population based survey from China comprising almost 53,000 respondents found that more than 1/3rd (~35”
The mental health impact of the covid-19 pandemic on healthcare workers, and interventions to help them: A rapid systematic review (2020, positive): “We also identified two systematic reviews 29 ,31 , which identified five primary studies 8 ,35 ,39 ,47 ,76 .”
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