Embedded Files
Behavioral and Psychological Conditions Facing COVID-19 Pandemic In light of all the harmful ramifications that derive from the current COVID-19 pandemic, it is essential that the government, the health authorities and the population articulate to endorse preventive and supportive measures, not only for the transmission of the disease, but also for emotional, behavioral and psychological impact. In this context, it is important to include mental health professionals managing the pandemic more broadly (Sani et al., 2020). Their knowledge and experience are crucial to monitor the situation and to coordinate supportive measures in order to prevent an even higher increase in psychological disorders, including panic, OCD, addiction and PTSD (Fiorillo and Gorwood, 2020; Sani et al., 2020). Finally, considering that poor mental health is associated with lower adherence to preventive measures for SARS-CoV-2, improving well-being might even decrease the rates of infection (Adhanom Ghebreyesus, 2020). Telepsychology Services As mentioned, worse medical follow-up is one of the most important features to understand the mental health impact of COVID-19 pandemic to mentally ill patients. Demand for telepsychology services, therefore, has increased markedly during the pandemic, and managers have accordingly tried to keep up with this abnormally high demand (Perrin et al., 2020). In fact, psychologists performed 7.07% of their work through telecommunication technologies before the COVID-19 pandemic, whereas, during the pandemic, this number increased to 85.53%, with 67.32% of the mental health professionals executing their work solely via telepsychology (Pierce et al., 2020). The United States government has pursued some actions to enlarge the role of telepsychology, such as allowing the possibility of some drugs to be prescribed in appointments via the Internet, and the expansion of Medicare and Medicaid to cover telepsychology and telemedicine consultations (Perrin et al., 2020; Pierce et al., 2020). Furthermore, online training with experienced trainers, along with tools and resources prepared by psychology organizations, are available in order to instruct the professionals for this new demand (Pierce et al., 2020). These learning opportunities are remarkably important, since lack of self-efficacy is one of the main reasons that explain the small use of telepsychology preceding the pandemic (Pierce et al., 2020). Concerning its efficacy, Internet-delivered therapy, such as cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), was not less effective than face-to-face CBT in health anxiety disorders, while resulting in lower treatment costs in previous studies (Axelsson et al., 2020). Therefore, even though the evidence base is still limited, these therapeutic modalities may have an important role for facing mental health issues during COVID-19 pandemic (Bilder et al., 2020; Fegert et al., 2020). Nevertheless, telepsychology uptake in more complex cases with severe symptomatology, such as antisocial personality disorder, behavioral issues and bipolar disorder, had a lower increase during the pandemic, indicating difficulty to treat the conditions via the internet or insufficient specialized training for psychologists. The same pattern was observed with testing and evaluation, which could signal insufficient tests adapted for telepsychology (Pierce et al., 2020). Furthermore, technology issues are among the main barriers to the implementation of telehealth. For instance, the elderly may lack
Google Sites
Report abuse