Living through the psychological consequences of COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic review of effective mitigating interventions.

OBJECTIVE: This review assesses interventions and their effectiveness in mitigating psychological consequences from pandemic. METHOD: Published English literatures were searched from four databases (Medline, PubMed, Embase and PsycINFO) from January 2020 and September 2021. A total of 27 papers with 29 studies (one paper reported three studies) met inclusion criteria. Cochrane risk-of-bias tool is applied to assess the quality of all randomised controlled trials (RCT). RESULTS: All studies were recently conducted in 2020. Publications were from high-income (13, 44.8%), upper middle-income (12, 41.4%) and lower middle-income countries (3, 10.3%) and global (1, 3.5%). Half of the studies conducted for general population (51.7%). One-third of studies (8, 27.6%) provided interventions to patients with COVID-19 and 20.7% to healthcare workers. Of the 29 studies, 14 (48.3%) were RCT. All RCTs were assessed for risk of biases; five studies (15, 35.7%) had low risk as measured against all six dimensions reflecting high-quality study.Of these 29 studies, 26 diagnostic or screening measures were applied; 8 (30.9%) for anxiety, 7 (26.9%) for depression, 5 (19.2%) for stress, 5 (19.2%) for insomnia and 1 (3.8%) for suicide. Measures used to assess the baseline and outcomes of interventions were standardised and widely applied by other studies with high level of reliability and validity. Of 11 RCT studies, 10 (90.9%) showed that anxiety interventions significantly lowered anxiety in intervention groups. Five of the six RCT studies (83.3%) had significantly reduced the level of depression. Most interventions for anxiety and stress were mindfulness and meditation based. CONCLUSIONS: Results from RCT studies (11%, 78.6%) were effective in mitigating psychological consequences from COVID-19 pandemic when applied to healthcare workers, patients with COVID-19 and general population. These effective interventions can be applied and scaled up in other country settings through adaptation of modes of delivery suitable to country resources, pandemic and health system context.

Face processing of social cognition in patients with first episode psychosis: Its deficits and association with the right subcallosal anterior cingulate cortex.

The clinical importance of social cognition is well acknowledged in patients with psychosis, in particular those with first episode psychosis (FEP). Nevertheless, its brain substrates and circuitries remain elusive, lacking precise analysis between multimodal brain characteristics and behavioral sub-dimensions within social cognition. In the present study, we examined face processing of social cognition in 71 FEP patients and 77 healthy controls (HCs). We looked for a possible correlation between face processing and multimodal MRI characteristics such as resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) and brain volume. We observed worse recognition accuracy, longer recognition response time, and longer memory response time in FEP patients when compared with HCs. Of these, memory response time was selectively correlated with specific rsFCs, which included the right subcallosal sub-region of BA24 in the ACC (scACC), only in FEP patients. The volume of this region was also correlated with memory response time in FEP patients. The scACC is functionally and structurally important in FEP-associated abnormalities of face processing measures in social cognition.

Equity of Social Health Insurance Coverage for Migrants in Thailand: A Concentration Index Analysis.

Thailand is attempting to implement an effective health insurance scheme to cover all migrant workers in the country. One of the remarkable policies is the Social Security Scheme (SSS). This study aims to assess the equity of SSS coverage among migrant workers in Thailand, sorted by types of businesses (agriculture, services and industrial sectors) and Gross Provincial Product (GPP) per capita. A secondary data analysis on time series cross-sectional data was employed. The dataset comprised: (1) the number of migrant insurees under the SSS; (2) the volume of migrant insurees in formal and informal sectors; and (3) provincial economic level and provincial population by years from 2015-2018. Descriptive statistics, Spearman's rank correlation, and concentration index analysis on the ratio of SSS insurees to all migrants ranked by GPP per capita and business types from 2015-2018 were performed. Results showed that the ratio of SSS insurees to all migrants increased from 38.5% to 58.9%. Spearman's correlation found a positive relationship between the SSS coverage and GPP per capita and business types in 2018. The statistical significance (p < 0.001) was found only in the industrial sector (rs = 0.346). Significant CIs were found in SSS coverage in the industrial sector in 2016 (CI = 0.147, p < 0.001), and SSS coverage in the industrial sector in 2017 (CI = 0.137, p < 0.001). In conclusion, the trend of CIs displayed a movement towards zero for all business types. This implied that the distribution of migrants in SSS shifted toward the equitable distribution across provinces in Thailand. A possible explanation was a major change in Thai politics in 2014 and a change in employment legislation for migrants in 2017. To expand the insurance coverage, the government should use the CI as a guide to consider specific provinces or target specific economic sectors as a priority to expedite the insurance enrolment for migrants.

Daily Step Counts from the First Thailand National Steps Challenge in 2020: A Cross-Sectional Study.

Thailand's first national steps challenge has been implemented in 2020 with the goal to raise the level of physical activity nationwide by monitoring achievements through a smartphone application. This study examined the daily step counts of participants in the first national steps challenge. Six data points from 186,653 valid participants were retrieved and analyzed in five periods using Poisson regression. The mean daily steps peaked at 3196 in Period 1, and steadily dropped to 1205 in Period 5. The daily steps per period were analyzed using the participants' characteristics, such as the type of participant, sex, age, body mass index, and area of residence. The overall mean daily steps of the participants meant physical activity was far below the recommended level and tended to drop in later periods. The general population achieved significantly higher mean daily steps than public health officers or village health volunteers (24.0% by multivariate analysis). Participants who were female, younger (<45 years), obese (body mass index > 30), and living in rural areas had fewer mean daily steps (13.8%, 44.3%, 12.7%, and 14.7% by multivariate analysis, respectively), with statistical significance. In the future, the national steps challenge should be continuously implemented by counting all steps throughout a day, using more strategies to draw attention and raise motivation, advocating for more participants, as well as reporting the whole day step counts instead of distance.