Support groups and individual mental health care via video conferencing for frontline clinicians during the COVID-19 pandemic
Open accessAbstract
Background The current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has put an enormous stress on the mental health of frontline health care workers.Objective Psychiatry departments in medical centers need to develop support systems to help our colleagues cope with this stress.Methods We developed recurring peer support groups via videoconferencing and telephone for physicians, resident physicians, and nursing staff, focusing on issues and emotions related to their frontline clinical work with COVID patients in our medical center which was designated as a COVID-only hospital by the state. These groups are led by attending psychiatrists and psychiatry residents. In addition, we also deployed a system of telehealth individual counseling by attending psychiatrists.Results Anxiety was high in the beginning of our weekly groups, dealing with fear of contracting COVID or spreading COVID to family members and the stress of social distancing. Later, the focus was also on the impairment of the traditional clinician-patient relationship by the characteristics of this disease and the associated moral challenges and trauma. Clinicians were helped to cope with these issues through group processes such as ventilation of feelings, peer support, consensual validation, peer-learning, and interventions by group facilitators. People with severe anxiety or desiring confidentiality were helped through individual interventions.Conclusions Our experience suggests that this method of offering telehealth peer support groups and individual counseling is a useful model for other centers to adapt to emotionally support frontline clinical workers in this ongoing worldwide crisis.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Video conferencing is a viable medium to provide support in absence of face-to-face meetings.
“evidence both prior to the pandemic and more recently suggests this may be a viable medium to provide support in the absence of face-to-face meetings (Karyotaki et al., 2018; Viswanathan et al., 2020).”
From ACTing towards better living during COVID-19: The effects of Acceptance and Commitment therapy for individuals affected by COVID-19 (2022) · cites this paper as Viswanathan et al., 2020
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Cites
Lai, J., Ma, S., Wang, Y., Cai, Z., Hu, J., Wei, N., Wu, J., Du, H., Chen, T., Li, R., et al. (2020) · JAMA Network Open · doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.3976 · Cited by 8,015 · see citing works
Mental health and the COVID-19 pandemic
Pfefferbaum, B., & North, C. S. (2020) · New England Journal of Medicine · doi:10.1056/nejmp2008017 · Cited by 4,378 · see citing works
Progression of Mental Health Services during the COVID-19 Outbreak in China
Li, W., Yang, Y., Liu, Z.-H., Zhao, Y.-J., Zhang, Q., Zhang, L., Cheung, T., & Xiang, Y.-T. (2020) · International Journal of Biological Sciences · doi:10.7150/ijbs.45120 · Cited by 1,213 · see citing works
Telehealth Interventions Delivering Home-based Support Group Videoconferencing: Systematic Review
Banbury, A., Nancarrow, S., Dart, J., Gray, L., & Parkinson, L. (2018) · Journal of Medical Internet Research · doi:10.2196/jmir.8090 · Cited by 336 · see citing works
Ripp, J., Peccoralo, L., & Charney, D. (2020) · Academic Medicine · doi:10.1097/acm.0000000000003414 · Cited by 320 · see citing works
Therapeutic Factors in Group Psychotherapy: A Review
Bloch, S. (1981) · Archives of General Psychiatry · doi:10.1001/archpsyc.1980.01780300031003 · Cited by 222 · cited 1× · see citing works
“Such therapeutic factors include sharing experiences in a peer setting, consensual validation, support and learning from peers, and building a sense of solidarity and camaraderie with fellow group members.(10) Examples are given in Table 1.”
COVID-19: Peer Support and Crisis Communication Strategies to Promote Institutional Resilience
Wu, A., Connors, C. A., & Everly, G. (2020) · Annals of Internal Medicine · doi:10.7326/m20-1236 · Cited by 204 · see citing works
Mental Health Needs of Health Care Workers Providing Frontline COVID-19 Care
Ayanian, J. Z. (2020) · JAMA Health Forum · doi:10.1001/jamahealthforum.2020.0397 · Cited by 197 · see citing works
Reflections: The Value of Patient Support Groups
Hu, A. C. (2017) · Otolaryngology · doi:10.1177/0194599817697030 · Cited by 52 · see citing works
Gautam, M., Kaur, M., & Mahr, G. (2020) · Psychosomatics · doi:10.1016/j.psym.2020.04.009 · Cited by 32 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Blake, H., Yildirim, M., Wood, B., Knowles, S., Mancini, H., Coyne, E., & Cooper, J. (2020) · International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health · doi:10.3390/ijerph17249401 · Cited by 74 · see citing works
Labrague, L. J., De los Santos, J. A. A., & Fronda, D. C. (2021) · International Journal of Mental Health Nursing · doi:10.1111/inm.12920 · Cited by 60 · see citing works
Xue, Y., Lopes, J., Ritchie, K., D’Alessandro, A. M., Banfield, L., McCabe, R. E., Heber, A., Lanius, R. A., & McKinnon, M. C. (2022) · Frontiers in Psychiatry · doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2022.863232 · Cited by 62 · see citing works
Shepherd, K., Golijani-Moghaddam, N., & Dawson, D. L. (2022) · Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science · doi:10.1016/j.jcbs.2021.12.003 · Cited by 31 · see citing works
Powell, L. D., Vasiliou, V. S., & Thompson, A. R. (2023) · Body Image · doi:10.1016/j.bodyim.2023.101637 · Cited by 11 · see citing works
- Authors
- Viswanathan, R., Myers, M. F., & Fanous, A. H.
- Affiliations
- SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Viswanathan, Ramaswamy
- ORCID
- Fanous, Ayman H.
- Venue
- Psychosomatics
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2020-09
- Volume
- 61
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 538-543
- ISSN
- 0033-3182 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC7308785
- OpenAlex
- W3035794721
- Cited by
- 98
- References
- 10
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 12 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 24 · 2022: 21 · 2021: 28 · 2020: 3
- FWCI
- 7.61
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Psychosomatics (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › COVID-19 and Mental Health
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Healthcare professionals’ stress and burnout
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Telemedicine and Telehealth Implementation
- Keywords
- COVID-19 pandemic, frontline health workers, clinician mental health, peer support groups, videoconferencing, telehealth counseling, anxiety, social distancing, clinician-patient relationship, moral distress, occupational injuries, psychiatric residents, nurses
- MeSH terms
- Betacoronavirus, COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, Counseling, Health Personnel, Humans, Internship and Residency, Mental Health Services, Nurses, Peer Group, Physicians, Pneumonia, Viral, Psychiatry, Self-Help Groups, Social Support, Telecommunications, Telemedicine, Coronavirus Infections, Videoconferencing, Pandemics
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
