providing mental health care. Timely mental health care needs to be developed urgently. Some methods used in the SARS outbreak could be helpful for the response to the 2019-nCoV outbreak. First, multidisciplinary mental health teams established by health authorities at regional and national levels (including psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses, clinical psychologists, and other mental health workers) should deliver mental health support to patients and health workers. Specialised psychiatric treatments and appropriate mental health services and facilities should be provided for patients with comorbid mental disorders. Second, clear communication with regular and accurate updates about the 2019-nCoV outbreak should be provided to both health workers and patients in order to address their sense of uncertainty and fear. Treatment plans, progress reports, and health status updates should be given to both patients and their families. Third, secure services should be set up to provide psychological counselling using electronic devices and applications (such as smartphones and WeChat) for affected patients, as well as their families and members of the public. Using safe communication channels between patients and families, such as smartphone communication and WeChat, should be encouraged to decrease isolation. Fourth, suspected and diagnosed patients with 2019-nCoV pneumonia as well as health professionals working in hospitals caring for infected patients should receive regular clinical screening for depression, anxiety, and suicidality by mental health workers. Timely psychiatric treatments should be provided for those presenting with more severe mental health problems. For most patients and health workers, emotional and behavioural responses are part of an adaptive response to extraordinary stress, and psychotherapy techniques such as those based on the stress-adaptation model might be helpful.7,10 If psychotropic medications are used, such as those prescribed by psychiatrists for severe psychiatric comorbidities,6 basic pharmacological treatment principles of ensuring minimum harm should be followed to reduce harmful effects of any interactions with 2019-nCoV and its treatments. In any biological disaster, themes of fear, uncertainty, and stigmatisation are common and may act as barriers to appropriate medical and mental health interventions. Based on experience from past serious novel pneumonia outbreaks globally and the psychosocial impact of viral epidemics, the development and implementation of mental health assessment, support, treatment, and services are crucial and pressing goals for the health response to the 2019-nCoV outbreak.Y-TX, YY, WL, LZ, and QZ contributed equally to this work. We declare no competing interests.*Yu-Tao Xiang, Yuan Yang, Wen Li, Ling Zhang, Qinge Zhang, Teris Cheung, Chee H Ngxyutly@gmail.comUnit of Psychiatry, Institute of Translational Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences (Y-TX, YY, WL) and Center for Cognition and Brain Sciences (Y-TX, YY, WL), University of Macau, Macao, China; Department of Psychiatry, Southern Medical University Nanfang Hospital & Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Center for Brian Science and Brain-Inspired Intelligence, Guangdong, China (YY); National Clinical Research Center for Mental Disorders & Beijing Key Laboratory of Mental Disorders, Beijing Anding Hospital & the Advanced Innovation Center for Human Brain Protection, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China (LZ, QZ); School of Nursing, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China (TC); and Department of Psychiatry, The Melbourne Clinic and St Vincent’s Hospital, University of Melbourne, Richmond, VIC, Australia (CHN)1 Wang C, Horby PW, Hayden FG, Gao GF. A novel East Asian Arch Psychiatry 2014; 24: 37–38.4 Chan JFW, Yuan S, Kok KH, et al. A familial cluster of pneumonia associated with the 2019 novel coronavirus indicating person-to-person transmission: a