The Psychosocial Impact of Treating Patients with COVID-19 on Psychiatry Residents in a Community Hospital: a Qualitative Study.

OBJECTIVE: The authors explored the experiences of psychiatry residents caring for patients during the COVID-19 pandemic on a medical unit. METHODS: From June 2020 through December 2020, structured, individual interviews were conducted with psychiatry residents deployed to internal medicine wards in a community hospital to provide medical care to COVID-19 patients for greater than or equal to 1 week. Interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed using thematic analytical methods. RESULTS: Psychiatry residents (n = 16) were interviewed individually for approximately 45 min each. During the interviews, many residents described emotions of fear, anxiety, uncertainty, lack of preparedness, and difficulty coping with high patient mortality rates. Many of the residents expressed concerns regarding insufficient personal protective equipment, with the subsequent worries of their own viral exposure and transmission to loved ones. Multiple residents expressed feeling ill-equipped to care for COVID-19 patients, in some cases stating that utilizing their expertise in mental health would have better addressed the mental health needs of colleagues and patients' families. Participants also described the benefits of processing emotions during supportive group sessions with their program director. CONCLUSIONS: The COVID-19 pandemic represents a public health crisis with potential negative impacts on patient care, professionalism, and physicians' well-being and safety. The psychiatry residents and fellows described the overwhelmingly negative impact on their training. The knowledge gained from this study will help establish the role of the psychiatrist not only in future crises but in healthcare as a whole.

Impact of COVID-19 on the Mental Health of Children and Adolescents.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak was first reported in Wuhan, China, and was later reported to have spread throughout the world to create a global pandemic. As of August 18th, 2020, the coronavirus had spread to more than 216 countries with at least 21,756,357 confirmed cases, resulting in 771,635 deaths globally. Several countries declared this pandemic as a national emergency, forcing millions of people to go into lockdown. This unexpected imposed social isolation has caused enormous disruption of daily routines for the global community, especially children. Among the measures intended to reduce the spread of the virus, most schools closed, canceled classes, and moved it to home-based or online learning to encourage and adhere to social distancing guidelines. Education and learnings of 67.6% of students are impacted globally due to coronavirus in 143 countries. The transition away from physical classes has significantly disrupted the lives of students and their families, posing a potential risk to the mental well-being of children. An abrupt change in the learning environment and limited social interactions and activities posed an unusual situation for children's developing brains. It is essential and obligatory for the scientific community and healthcare workers to assess and analyze the psychological impact caused by the coronavirus pandemic on children and adolescents, as several mental health disorders begin during childhood. Countries across the globe, including the United States, are in the dilemma of determining appropriate strategies for children to minimize the psychological impact of coronavirus. The design of this review is to investigate and identify the risk factors to mental health and propose possible solutions to avoid the detrimental consequence of this crisis on the psychology of our future adult generations.