The 2019 novel coronavirus disease emerged in China in late 2019-early 2020 and spread rapidly. China has been implementing emergency psychological crisis interventions to reduce the negative ...psychosocial impact on public mental health, but challenges exist. Public mental health interventions should be formally integrated into public health preparedness and emergency response plans.
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Introduction This Crisis Intervention Team was born in October 2018 with the aim of intensifying the treatment of people in psychiatric crisis situation. Objectives Provide an intensive and early ...assessment and approach in a timely manner. It also provides home care if necessary. Methods The team intensively performs scheduled visits, emergencys, telephone interventions and home care. It is in constant coordination with other structures of the mental health and socio-health network. Results A total of 83 patients have been included in our team since its inception. The youngest was 17 years old and the oldest 83 years old (exceptional case in evaluation). The mean age was 45.6 years. 67.4% were female (56 women) and 32.5% male (27 men). The delay in care did not exceed 48 hours. 200 patients were evaluated into suicide protocol, with ages ranging from 15 to 85 years, with a mean age of 45.4 years. The delay in care does not exceed 10 days. Conclusions This is a team that offers a rapid response, dedicates the necessary time for a correct evaluation of the risk, of the evolution and tries to establish a therapeutic alliance in record time. It is able to tolerate a certain degree of uncertainty, manage and tolerate the level of risk. He stands out for being flexible and dynamic in order to be able to adapt to the patients and theirs circumstances. This requires empathy, closeness and commitment. Disclosure No significant relationships.
Abstract
The novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19) epidemic has brought serious social psychological impact to the Chinese people, especially those quarantined and thus with limited access to ...face-to-face communication and traditional social psychological interventions. To better deal with the urgent psychological problems of people involved in the COVID-19 epidemic, we developed a new psychological crisis intervention model by utilizing internet technology. This new model, one of West China Hospital, integrates physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers into Internet platforms to carry out psychological intervention to patients, their families and medical staff. We hope this model will make a sound basis for developing a more comprehensive psychological crisis intervention response system that is applicable for urgent social and psychological problems.
Objective: Mental illness is a leading cause of disease burden; however, many barriers prevent people from seeking mental health services. Technological innovations may improve our ability to reach ...underserved populations by overcoming many existing barriers. We evaluated a brief, automated risk assessment and intervention platform designed to increase the use of crisis resources provided to those online and in crisis. Method: Participants, users of the digital mental health app Koko, were randomly assigned to treatment or control conditions upon accessing the app and were included in the study after their posts were identified by machine learning classifiers as signaling a current mental health crisis. Participants in the treatment condition received a brief Barrier Reduction Intervention (BRI) designed to increase the use of crisis service referrals provided on the app. Participants were followed up several hours later to assess the use of crisis services. Results: Only about one quarter of participants in a crisis (21.8%) reported being "very likely" to use clinical referrals provided to them, with the most commonly endorsed barriers being they "just want to chat" or their "thoughts are too intense." Among participants providing follow-up data (41.3%), receipt of the BRI was associated with a 23% increase in the use of crisis services. Conclusion: These findings suggest that a brief, automated BRI can be efficacious on digital platforms, even among individuals experiencing acute psychological distress. The potential to increase help seeking and service utilization with such procedures holds promise for those in need of psychiatric services. Trial Registration: clinicaltrials.gov identifier: NCT03633825.
What is the public health significance of this article?
This study provides evidence that a brief, automated barrier reduction procedure increased the rate of service utilization among individuals in acute distress on digital platforms. These findings suggest that automated procedures may have the potential to increase help-seeking behavior among those in need of mental health services on a large scale.
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6.
Psychological first aid (PFA) and disasters Everly, George S.; Lating, Jeffrey M.
International review of psychiatry (Abingdon, England),
11/2021, Volume:
33, Issue:
8
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
A disaster is commonly thought of as an occurrence that results in property damage and physical injuries that exceed the response capabilities of local resources. History teaches that disasters also ...result in a surge in demand for psychological support amongst survivors and disaster responders. This surge quickly exceeds local response capacities and has the potential to exceed even the mental health resources that may be imported from neighbouring jurisdictions and disaster relief agencies. Efficient and effective acute mental health intervention is, therefore, needed. However, the effectiveness of traditional multi-session counselling during and shortly after disasters has been questioned. Instead, the utilization of efficient and effective crisis-focussed psychological interventions has been suggested as acute phase alternatives. This paper asserts psychological first aid (PFA) may be considered a specific crisis-focussed disaster mental health intervention for use during and after disasters. PFA is designed for use in assessing and mitigating acute distress, while serving as a platform for psychological triage complementing more traditional psychological and psychiatric interventions. PFA may be employed by mental health clinicians as well as 'peer responders'.
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The outbreak of COVID-19 in Spain started at the end of February. By 9th April 2020 Spain was the second country in confirmed cases and in deaths. On March 14, 2020, the Spanish Government declared ...the state of alarm to limit viral transmission. During such state, citizens must stay confined at home with few justified exceptions. This whole situation drastically changed the life of the population, which can cause a wide range of psychosocial impacts. This study explored the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the general adult population (
N
= 3055) during the first stages of the outbreak in Spain, as well as their anxiety, stress and depression levels. We also examined the extent to which the following variables were associated to participants’ mental health: (1) demographics; (2) degree of concern about the pandemic; (3) environmental conditions during the home confinement, (4) changes in daily life as a consequence of the pandemic; (5) contact with the COVID-19 disease; (6) actual and perceived severity of the crisis; (7) information about the COVID-19, (8) perceived health status and (9) leisure activities conducted within the last 24 h. Our results show that Spanish consider the current COVID-19 health crisis as fairly severe, and the majority felt that the COVID-19 crisis had greatly impacted on their daily life, including changes in their daily routines and cancelation of important activities. About 36% of the participants reported moderate to severe psychological impact, 25% showed mild to severe levels of anxiety, 41% reported depressive symptoms, and 41% felt stressed. Women, young, and those who that lost their job during the health crisis showed the strongest negative psychological symptoms. What worried Spaniards the most was the likelihood of suffering an economic crisis derived from the pandemic. We found factors associated with better mental health, such as being satisfied with the information received about the health crisis, conducting leisure activities, and the perception of being in good health. These findings can be used to design psychological interventions to help coping with COVID-19 pandemic, both in Spain and other countries.
A crisis can be described as subjective experience that threatens and overwhelms a person's ability to handle a specific situation. In dealing with crises some people are looking for support from ...professionals. The "professional relationship" between people experiencing a crisis and professionals plays an important role in the successful management of a crisis which has been widely researched in many contexts. However, regarding outpatient services (e. g. crisis resolution home treatment teams), yet empirical evidence remains limited.
We aim to explore descriptions of supportive professional relationships during outpatient crisis interventions in empirical literature. Accordingly, a scoping review was conducted to identify types of evidence, map the key concepts, and point out research gaps.
MEDLINE, PsycINFO, CINAHL and Social Science Citation Index were searched for studies reporting empirical data on the professional relationship between people experiencing a crisis (18+) and professionals (e. g. social workers, psychiatrists) during a crisis intervention, defined as a short-term, face-to-face, low threshold, time-limited, outpatient, and voluntary intervention to cope with crises. Studies were excluded if they were published before 2007, in languages other than English and German, and if they couldn't be accessed. Included studies were summarized, compared, and synthesized using qualitative content analyses.
3.741 records were identified, of which 8 met the eligibility criteria. Only one study directly focused on the relationship; the others addressed varied aspects. Two studies explored the perspectives of service users, five focused on those of the professionals and one study examined both. The empirical literature was categorized into three main themes: strategies used to develop a supportive professional relationship, factors influencing the relationship and the nature of these relationships.
The results reveal a gap in understanding the nature of supportive professional relationships from the service users' perspective, as well as how professionals construct these relationships.
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Objective:
Frequent callers present a challenge for crisis helplines, which strive to achieve optimal outcomes for all callers within finite resources. This study aimed to describe frequent callers ...to Lifeline (the largest crisis helpline in Australia) and compare them with non-frequent callers, with a view to furthering knowledge about models of service delivery that might meet the needs of frequent callers.
Method:
Lifeline provided an anonymous dataset on calls made between December 2011 and May 2013. We assumed calls from the same (encrypted) phone number were made by the same person, and aggregated call level data up to the person level. Individuals who made 0.667 calls per day in any period from 1 week to the full 549 days for which we had data (i.e. 4.7 calls in 7 days, 20 calls in 30 days, 40 calls in 60 days, etc.) were regarded as frequent callers.
Results:
Our analysis dataset included 411,725 calls made by 98,174 individuals, 2594 (2.6%) of whom met our definition of frequent callers. We identified a number of predictors of being a frequent caller, including being male or transgender, and never having been married. The odds increased with age until 55–64 years, and then declined. Suicidality, self-harm, mental health issues, crime, child protection and domestic violence issues all predicted being a frequent caller.
Conclusions:
Collectively, frequent callers have a significant impact on crisis lines, and solutions need to be found for responding to them that are in everybody’s best interests (i.e. the frequent callers themselves, other callers, telephone crisis supporters who staff crisis lines, and those who manage crisis lines). In striking this balance, the complex and multiple needs of frequent callers must be taken into account.
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Crisis resolution and home treatment teams respond rapidly to people experiencing mental health crises and offer an alternative to hospital admission. They are an increasingly important component of ...mental health care and are adopted by many health care systems around the world. This practical and pioneering book describes the evidence for the effectiveness of such teams, the principles underpinning them, how to set up and organise them, how patients should be assessed and what types of care the teams should offer. Other topics covered include integration of crisis teams with in-patient, community residential and day care services, the service users' experiences of crisis teams, and responding to diversity in home treatment. This book is essential reading for all policy makers, service managers and mental health workers interested in establishing or operating crisis resolution and home treatment services, as well as for researchers and students seeking to understand this model.
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