COVID-19: The Impact of a Pandemic on Mental Health
Providing Mental Health Interventions for Patients and Healthcare Workers
CONTACT HOURS: 1.5
Copyright © 2021 Wild Iris Medical Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
LEARNING OUTCOME AND OBJECTIVES: Upon completion of this course, you will have gained an understanding of and ways to mitigate the mental health impacts of a pandemic. Specific learning objectives to address potential learning gaps include:
- Define the term “pandemic.”
- Describe the psychological effects of a widespread infectious illness on the general population and effects unique to healthcare workers.
- Summarize strategies to reduce mental health impacts among patients and healthcare workers.
- Discuss the “duty of care” concept.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Defining Pandemic
- Mental Health Effects of a Pandemic
- Strategies to Reduce the Mental Health Impacts of a Pandemic
- Duty of Care
- Conclusion
- Resources
- References
DEFINING PANDEMIC
Epidemic and pandemic are closely related terms:
- An epidemic is an outbreak of a disease occurring over a wide geographic area and affecting a high proportion of the population. It is an event in which a disease is actively spreading. Examples include the recent Zika, Ebola, and SARS epidemics.
- A pandemic is an epidemic that has spread to multiple countries or regions of the world. The most recent pandemic is the COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2020.
HISTORICALLY NOTABLE PANDEMICS
- Bubonic plague of Justinian of 541–42 A.D.; killed 25 million, perhaps half the population of Europe
- Black plague (Black Death) of 1346–53; killed 75 to 200 million
- Spanish flu pandemic of 1918; killed over 50 million people worldwide, including 675,000 in the United States
- Smallpox pandemic during the 20th century; killed 30,000 to 300,000
- Asian flu (H2N2) of 1956–58; killed 69,800 in the United States alone
- Hong Kong flu (H3N2) of 1968; killed 1 million
- HIV/AIDS pandemic beginning in 1981; infected 70 million and killed 36.7 million
- Swine flu of 2009–2010; killed 1 million globally
- COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2020; killed millions globally
(MPHonline, 2021; Dotzert, 2020; WHO, 2021)
A formal declaration by the World Health Organization of a pandemic does not mean that the infectious agent has become more aggressive or more deadly or that the personal risk of getting the disease is greater. Rather it alerts governments, agencies, and aid organizations around the world to shift their efforts from containment (strict restrictions on population movement) to mitigation (actions to slow the spread, making the situation or consequences less severe).
Pandemics can cause significant social, economic, and political disruption. On an individual level, a pandemic may also exacerbate anxiety and psychosis-like symptoms and lead to nonspecific mental health problems such as mood problems, sleep problems, phobia-like behaviors, panic-like symptoms, anger, substance use, or feeling overwhelmed both in the general population and among healthcare professionals. It is therefore important to be alert for the effects of mental distress so that early interventions can take place (Moukaddam & Shah, 2020; Fischer, 2020).