- Counselling patients to seek professional mental health assistance when needed
- Educating themselves by receiving training about the psychosocial issues their patients may face and how to best deal with them
- Providing suggestions for stress management and coping (maintaining routines and structuring activities)
- Linking patients to social and mental health services

Columbia University

- Accurate dissemination of health and related information to the public
- Addition of psychologists and psychiatrists to the COVID-19 task force
- Have HCPs take a bigger role in mental health care of patients
- Identification of high-risk groups (psychologically)
- Improved screening of psychiatric morbidities
- Integration of hospital and community resources
- Psycho-education (preventative)
- Psychological interventions and psychosocial support
- Psychological support for frontline workers



Strategies to Combat Psychological Impact of COVID-19

Pfefferbaum, B., & North, C. S. (2020). Mental health and the Covid-19 pandemic. New England Journal of Medicine.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2008017

Mental Health and the Covid-19 Pandemic

- Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)
- Counselling telephone helplines
- Direct queries about COVID-19 related stressors (infected loved ones, loss of loved ones, exposures to infection), secondary adversities (economic loss, change in employment status), psychosocial effects (anxiety, psychosomatic preoccupations, insomnia, depression, substance use, domestic violence), and indicators of vulnerability (preexisting physical and/or psychological condition
- Frontline health-care worker psychological interventions (untrained)
- Mentalization-based therapy (MBT)
- Online psychological counselling

Psychological Interventions for people affected by COVID-19

Role of Health Care Providers in Patient Mental Health

Healthcare professionals should use standard instruments to screen for psychiatric morbidities. Impact of Event Scale-Revised
(IES-R) was used in Singapore during public health crises. Also, smartphone technology can be used to access the mental health of people during the COVID-19 pandemic.

 Screening of Psychiatric Morbidities

- Being at heightened risk of contracting the disease (elderly, people with compromised immune function, people living in congregate settings)
- Burnout and strain against healthcare workers
- Contracting COVID-19
- Having preexisting medical, psychiatric or substance use condition
- High-risk groups (women, students)
- Job loss and income insecurity
- Poor health
- Social isolation

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