[Impact of public health emergency on public psychology: analysis of mental health assistance hotlines during COVID-19 in Zhejiang province].

OBJECTIVE: To analyze the usage of mental health assistance hotline during COVID-19 in Zhejiang province from January 25th to February 29th 2020, and summarize the characteristics of the demand for mental health services and the dynamic changes of public mental health status during COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used. The calls related to pandemic were divided into four categories: medical, psychological, information and the others. The secondary categories of psychological calls were determined by text analysis. The number of calls were calculated weekly and the number of various types of calls over time were analyzed. We used stratified random sampling method to extract 600 cases of all kinds of calls related to pandemic and conducted a semantic analysis, through marking new, similar combination to form a feature set, then summed up the call content characteristics of each stage. Two hundred callers were followed up to understand how they felt about the call process in four aspects: the waiting time, call duration, the degree of problem-solving and the way to end the call. RESULTS: In a total of 13 746 calls, 8978 were related to pandemic, among which 12.59%(1130/8978) were about medical issues, 26.50%(2379/8978) were about mental health, 27.18%(2440/8978) were about information regarding the pandemic and 33.74%(3029/8978) were about other pandemic related issues. Pandemic situation, relevant policy release, frequency of advertising campaigns were predictors of the number of calls per day during the pandemic (P<0.05 or P<0.01). The number of calls differed by gender and identities of callers (both P<0.05). Finally 181 callers accepted telephone follow-up. Among them, 51.38%(93/181) of the callers thought that the waiting time was too long, 33.15%(60/181) of the callers thought that the call time was insufficient, 80.66%(146/181) of callers believed that the hotline could partially or completely resolve their concerns, and 39.23%(71/181) of the callers said the operator proposed to end the call. CONCLUSIONS: s The changes of the number and content of the mental health assistance hotline calls reflected that the public mental health status experienced four stages during the pandemic: confusion, panic, boredom, and adjustment. The specialized mental health assistance hotlines should be further strengthened, and the efficiency should be improved. Mental health interventions should be tailored and adopted according to the characteristics of the public mental health status at different stages of the pandemic.

Timely mental health services contribute to the containment of COVID-19 pandemic in China.

The COVID-19 pandemic is the most severe public health crisis in the 21st century. The pandemic not only posed great challenges to people's physical health but also induced wide-ranging impacts on mental health of infected and suspected patients, frontline healthcare workers, and the general public whose normal life was disrupted by the pandemic. In this commentary, we outline the initiatives and coordinated efforts on providing timely mental health services after the pandemic outbreak in China, including understanding the mental health impact of COVID-19, prioritizing and coordinating mental health services along with medical services in the efforts to contain the pandemic, initiating and implementing specific measures to improve mental wellbeing of frontline healthcare workers, and increasing the accessibility of mental health services to the general public. Theses services, along with other coordinated efforts, contribute to the containment of COVID-19 pandemic in China and could be valuable for other countries to take proactive measures to mitigate the mental health impacts of the pandemic now and in the future.