Storytelling for disability in COVID-19

This chapter describe a Storytelling and Narrative Medicine pilot study which focused on communication in therapeutic settings. The research was carried out by a group of Italian Health Care professionals (HCP) from Calambrone Institute for Rehabilitation (IRC), at the IRCCS Stella Maris Foundation, along with a group of parents of patients with disabilities. However, because of the Covid-19 outbreak in Italy, many of the participants found themselves in lockdown in their own homes with their children. To evaluate the efficacy of storytelling as a tool for emotional and communication support, the authors submitted to both the HCP and parents two original online surveys to get information on their current emotional state. The assessed areas were personal stress, the relationship with children and family members, and the relationship with colleagues and professionals. The chapter focuses on emotional and psychological consequences that lack of social and therapeutic interactions might have produced. This short but effective educational intervention gives skills and knowledge to structure one's feelings and thoughts in a narrative form, equipping the participants with the resources to perceive themselves and their life experiences as the elements of the story. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on patients with migraine.

Objectives: The aim of our work was to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and quarantine measures on migraine patients in regards to the activity of the disease, the psycho-emotional background of the patients and their quality of life. Methods: his study included 133 patients with established diagnosis of migraine. All study participants were divided into two clinical groups: A-patients with chronic and episodic forms of migraine, who had a history of positive PCR test for COVID-19, and B-patients with chronic and episodic forms of migraine who did not have a history of coronavirus disease. Results: We detected increase in the number of antimigraine medication (p = 0.04), frequency of headache attacks (p = 0.01), and the psycho-emotional state deterioration (increase in the Hamilton anxiety scale score) (p = 0.002) in patients after recovery from the coronavirus disease. There was no significant difference in the headache's intensity according to the VAS scale (p = 0.51) as well as in the dynamics of the Beck depression scale score (p = 0.09) before and after the COVID-19 infection. Conclusion: Patients with a history of migraine who recovered from COVID-19 showed increased frequency of migraine headache attacks and anxiety.

Features of Anesthesiologists-Reanimatologists' Emotional States in Different COVID-19 Pandemic Periods in Russia

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the most stressful events in recent times. Medical professionals, including anesthesiologists-reanimatologists, suffered the main blow in this difficult and stressful environment. Aim(s): This study aimed at identifying the features of anesthesiologists-reanimatologists' emotional states in different COVID-19 pandemic periods. Method(s): The study was conducted through an anonymous questionnaire among anesthesiologists-reanimatologists in two periods. In the First stage - which was carried out in May 2020 (during the first COVID-19 pandemic wave) - 58 anesthesiologists-reanimatologists in the Arkhangelsk region took part. During the Second segment - which took place in October 2020 (in the second COVID-19 pandemic wave) - 43 anesthesiologistsreanimatologists were examined. Repeated questioning was carried out among the same participants. Result(s): In October 2020, compared to May, the number of doctors who noted a high intensity of professional activity increased. Regardless of the study period, one-third of the subjects experienced constant pronounced anxiety. Anesthesiologists-reanimatologists, whose professional activity was directly related to the patients in COVID-19 care, noted a poorer emotional state more frequently in October, accompanied by anxiety, depressed mood, irritability and a high burnout level, which may indicate a depletion of internal resources in this group. Conclusion(s): The study results showed that for anesthesiologists-reanimatologists, a further depletion of emotional resources accompanied the second pandemic wave. The anesthesiologists-reanimatologists' emotional state was mediated by a number of social and gender factors, as well as specific labor organization features.Copyright © 2022 The Authors. Published by Semmelweis University, Institute of Mental Health, Budapest.

Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Women's Health and Obstetric Outcomes after Assisted Reproduction: A Survey from an Italian Fertility Center.

BACKGROUND: the restrictive measures that were adopted during three waves of the COVID-19 pandemic had an impact on both the emotional state and lifestyle of the general population. We evaluated the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on lifestyles and emotional states of women planning assisted reproductive technology (ART), and whether these changes affected ART outcomes. METHODS: quantitative research, using a web-based survey, was performed on 289 Caucasian women. RESULTS: In preconception, we observed higher percentage of women with positive obstetric outcomes who reduced body weight (52.4% vs. 27.2%, p = 0.09). Over 60% of women with positive outcomes practiced physical activity vs. 47% of women with negative outcomes (p = 0.03), as well as having better quality of sleep (45% vs. 35%), and a more solid relationships with their partners (65.1% vs. 51.7%, p = 0.03). Women who increased their intake of whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and legumes (p < 0.05), according to the Mediterranean diet, showed positive outcomes. We observed that participants who experienced "very much" or "extreme" anxiety, sadness, and fear (p < 0.05) during pandemic were clearly more numerous in the group with negative pregnancy outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: healthy lifestyle together with a positive emotional state in preconception can positively influence the obstetric outcomes after ART.

The Relationship between Psychological Stress and Emotional State in Chinese University Students during COVID-19: The Moderating Role of Physical Exercise.

OBJECTIVE: To explore the relationship between psychological stress and the emotional state of Chinese college students and the moderating effect of physical exercise. METHODS: Students in a university in Jiangsu Province were randomly selected for the survey, and questionnaires were administered using the Physical Activity Rating Scale, the Profile of Mood States, and the Chinese College Student Psychological Stress Scale. A total of 715 questionnaires were distributed, and 494 valid questionnaires were returned. Among the students, there were 208 (42.1%) males and 286 (57.9%) females, with a mean age of 19.27 years (SD = 1.06). RESULTS: We found a significant negative correlation between physical exercise and psychological stress (r = -0.637, p < 0.001); a significant negative correlation between physical exercise and emotional state (r = -0.032, p < 0.001); and a significant positive correlation between psychological stress and emotional state (r = 0.51, p < 0.001). Physical exercise negatively moderates the relationship between psychological stress and emotional state (B = -0.012, p < 0.01, ΔR2 = 0.007). CONCLUSION: Physical exercise is negatively correlated with both emotional state and psychological stress. Physical exercise can reduce the influence of psychological stress on emotional state and promote emotional health.

Dominating mental states of the representatives of individual sports under lockdown and martial law: comparative analysis

The purpose is to compare psychological content parameters of dominating mental states of the representatives of individual sports under forced isolation, caused by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and martial law. The sample consisted of the Ukrainian sportsmen (n=98), representing such sports as track and field (n=58), weight lifting (n=27) and freestyle wrestling (n=13). Research methods: valid methods with standardized forms for responses, participant observation, ranking, application of reliability coefficients. Results. It was established that there were no significant differences in the comparison of psychological content parameters under lockdown (Group 1) and martial law (Group 2). The ranking method allowed identifying the key measurements correlating with a respondent's resilience which is a main characteristic in handling difficulties in tough situations. It was established that the ranks are different in the following parameters: "Psychological Well-Being” (PWВ);"General Meaningfulness of an Athlete's Life” (GMAL) at the level р>.01 and at the level р>.05 in the parameters: "Challenge” (Ch);"Hardiness” (Hr);"Control” (Cn);"Commitment” (Cm). Two factor structures of dominating mental states of the representatives of individual sports under lockdown and martial law were created. It was established that the factor structures have different frameworks and dispersions of scattering in similar mental states. It was determined that lockdown for the representatives of individual sports was less stressful than sporting activities under martial law. It is obvious that permanent involvement in information flows concerning the situation with the military aggression, air-raid warnings, changes in training schedules, finishing performance at the time of air-raid warnings and staying in bomb shelters had a considerable impact on the total index of meaning-of-life orientations, self-regulation processes, involvement and control of the representatives of individual sports. Conclusions. The suggested factor structures of dominating mental states and the identified ranking research parameters are of scientific value and can contribute to efficient tactical training in difficult and extreme conditions. © JPES.

A systematic survey on multimodal emotion recognition using learning algorithms

Emotion recognition is the process to detect, evaluate, interpret, and respond to people's emotional states and emotions, ranging from happiness to fear to humiliation. The COVID- 19 epidemic has provided new and essential impetus for emotion recognition research. The numerous feelings and thoughts shared and posted on social networking sites throughout the COVID-19 outbreak mirrored the general public's mental health. To better comprehend the existing ecology of applied emotion recognition, this work presents an overview of different emotion acquisition tools that are readily available and provide high recognition accuracy. It also compares the most widely used emotion recognition datasets. Finally, it discusses various machine and deep learning classifiers that can be employed to acquire high level features for classification. Different data fusion methods are also explained in detail highlighting their benefits and limitations. © 2022 The Author(s)

Anxious and Angry: Early Emotional Adaptation of Medical Students in a Situational Crisis on the Example of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic is an example of a situational crisis resulting in emotional destabilization. The aim of the study was to analyze changes in the level of anxiety and anger in medical students during the early adaptation to the situational crisis, and to estimate the risk factors for fear and anger in this group. METHODS: Participants were 949 medical students (M = 22.88, SD = 4.10) in the first stage on March 2020, and 748 (M = 22.57, SD = 3.79) in the second stage on June 2020. The STAI, STAXI-2, and our own questionnaire were used. RESULTS: First vs the second stage: anxiety state (p < 0.001), anger state (p = 0.326), and feeling angry (p < 0.05). The regression model (F(14.1681) = 79.01, p < 0.001) for the level of anxiety state explains 39% of the dependent variable variance (r2 = 0.39). The model for the anger-state level (F(6.1689) = 68.04, p < 0.001)-19% (r2 = 0.19). CONCLUSIONS: During the early adaptation to the situational crisis, the general level of anxiety decreased, but anger was at the same level. The anxiety was explained by contact with potentially or objective infected persons, and the level of anger was based on the need for greater social support.

HEALTHY HABITS IN CSIC WORKERS DURING COVID-19 LOCKDOWN IN SPAIN

Aim: COVID-19 crisis has caused a deep change in citizen's lifestyle. Previous outbreaks have shown that people under confinement can develop mental health problems and cause effects on physical activity (PA) and changes in the diet habits. Subject and Methods: An online questionnaire about healthy habits during the Spanish lockdown was sent to workers from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). Results: A general improvement in the dietary patterns, except for the intake of snacks and bakery goods was observed. PA was subs-tantially reduced, mostly in men, unlike the emotional changes, which were greater in women, mainly observed as anxiety and sleep disorders. Additionally, emotional eating (EE) behaviors were detected mainly in women, although the intake related to boredom was observed in both genders. Conclusions: Ove-rall, the dietary patterns of CSIC workers followed the general recommendations for COVID-19 lockdown. However, half of the participants decreased their PA practice. Regarding to the emotional changes, emotional eating behaviors were associated with anxiety, especially in women, and boredom for both genders. © 2022, CSIC Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas. All rights reserved.

Changes in Interests and Emotional Responses to News Coverage of Coronavirus Disease 2019 Case Numbers Over Time

Understanding how people's interest and emotional state change in response to news coverage of a particular topic and elucidating the characteristics of these changes can reveal the shifting nature of attention and emotion. We analyzed people's interest and emotional responses expressed via Twitter in response to news coverage of announcements of new cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) as a case study. As a measure of interest, we examined replies to tweets of news items posted by media outlets on Twitter, and classified the emotional content of each reply tweet using Plutchik's wheel of emotion. The analysis suggested that people were most interested in COVID-19 case numbers in April 2020, when the first wave of cases occurred and the first emergency declaration was issued, and in July 2020, when the second wave of cases emerged. The results revealed that fear was the most commonly expressed emotion. The ratio of fear-related tweets was highest in February and March 2020, a time at which new COVID-19 cases were confirmed in various locations and there was substantial public discussion regarding whether Japan would declare a state of emergency for the first time. © 2022 IEEE.

The relationship between burnout, coping strategies and stress management strategies in health care professionals

Burnout syndrome is lately more and more often encountered in national and even international scientific papers on different professional categories and hierarchical levels. In this research is targeted the medical staff of Medical-Social Care Unit, nurses, medical assistants and even doctors. Unit founded in 2007 that keeps the same staff since then, forming a familiar framework for both employees and beneficiaries and developing different skills for teamwork. Even since the pandemic, the rules became stricter and the entire staff was removed from their comfort zone which could lead to an imbalance in stress management and imprint on emotional state of the employees, therefore causing burnout. This research targets a single objective, specifically the relationship between burnout, cognitive-emotional coping strategies and professional stress management strategies, the hypotheses being formulated one by one considering the correlation of two variables. [ FROM AUTHOR]

COMPASSION FATIGUE IN NURSES WORKING AT COVID 19 CLINIC

The study aims to make an assessment by focusing on the compassion fatigue of nurses, who work at Covid 19 clinic at a state hospital, during the pandemic. The study discusses the subject based on variables such as Covid 19 and working environment. In the research, content analysis perspective of the qualitative research method was used to understand and analyse the correlation between the Covid 19 phenomenon and compassion fatigue of the nurses who actively participate in the treatment process. In that scope, 18 nurses working at Covid 19 clinic were interviewed. A semi-structured form was prepared about compassion fatigue and 16 questions were asked to the nurses who are included in the sample. In the study conducted, it was found that compassion fatigue of the nurses who work at Covid 19 clinic is on the rise and more than half of the nurses who were interviewed were experiencing advance level of compassion fatigue with the Covid 19 pandemic. It was observed that reasons such as nurses’ empathizing with the patients that they provide care and treatment, patients’ feeling excessive pain, patients’ having extensive care needs, young patient deaths, nurses’ witnessing the last moments of patients, uncertainties in patients’ treatment process, some patients’ not getting better, patients’ emotional state, fear of death were effective in nurses’ having compassion fatigue. (English) [ FROM AUTHOR]

Analysis of Students' Emotions in an Online Learning Environment

The COVID 19 pandemic has affected several sectors of human life, including the educational system. It has led to a rapid and forced shift towards online learning. This radical change has influenced the students' behavior, emotional state as well as their ability to learn. In order to analyze this situation, we focus in this work on the automatic detection of students' emotions while exploiting the techniques and methods of sentiment analysis and machine learning. The proposed solution aims to predict students' emotions and some of the aspects related to online learning from students' reviews and then infers the attitude of students using association rules and clustering. The data-set consists of students' answers in a forum sent at the end of sessions and semesters, annotated manually, during online learning. The obtained results using precision and recall was satisfying and favorable. © 2022 IEEE.

Teachers’ emotions, technostress, and burnout in distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Distance Learning (DL) supported teachers and students, allowing them to have a virtual educational context in which continuing to teach, study, and interact. However, several difficulties were reported by teachers in using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), which in turn negatively influenced their emotional state and contributed to technological stress (technostress) and burnout onset. In this study, we wanted to investigate whether experiencing negative emotions while using DL, the instruction delivery mode (i.e., online;face-to-face;blended), and the risk of technostress could predict teachers' burnout;whether active technical support from participants' institutions could represent a protective factor against burnout;if there is a difference between female and male participants in experiencing technostress. Results confirmed that negative emotions and technostress, but not the instruction delivery mode, predict burnout;support from institutions may represent a protective factor;there were no differences between male and female teachers in experiencing anxiety linked to technostress. Possible explanation for these results and implications for practice are discussed. © 2020 Copyright for this paper by its authors.

"I just want to play games with friends and it asked me for all of my information": Trading privacy for connection during the COVID-19 pandemic

We conducted 22 semi-structured interviews with participants in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic when restrictions were in effect, to learn about social media users' privacy behaviors and what influenced changes in behavior since the beginning of the pandemic. We found that participants felt pressured to stay "relevant"online, which led to increased consumption and sharing of content, as well as increased re-posting of older content. Participants also noted increased disclosure of negative emotional states and that they were expected to publicly display their stance in regards to social movements. Participants felt increasingly reliant on social media as a means of connection which led them to download and install additional social apps despite privacy concerns. Each of these activities has potential privacy implications in terms of explicit data sharing and in terms of increased sources of information for online behavioral tracking and profiling. © 2022 ACM.

Sentiment Analysis of Covid19 Vaccines Tweets Using NLP and Machine Learning Classifiers

Sentiment Analysis (SA) is an approach for detecting subjective information such as thoughts, outlooks, reactions, and emotional state. The majority of previous SA work treats it as a text-classification problem that requires labelled input to train the model. However, obtaining a tagged dataset is difficult. We will have to do it by hand the majority of the time. Another concern is that the absence of sufficient cross-domain portability creates challenging situation to reuse same-labelled data across applications. As a result, we will have to manually classify data for each domain. This research work applies sentiment analysis to evaluate the entire vaccine twitter dataset. The work involves the lexicon analysis using NLP libraries like neattext, textblob and multi class classification using BERT. This word evaluates and compares the results of the machine learning algorithms. © 2022 IEEE.

Psychological Reaction of Teachers in the Context of the Covid Pandemic 19

The Covid 19 pandemic, is a period with a strong impact in all areas of the families, their social, economic, political and educational life. The rules and sanitary measures to prevent the spread of the pandemic, the educational policies, as well as the isolation, quarantine of some teachers, imposed the transition from classical education to online one. This transition, and also the need for digitalization, have led to major changes in teaching activity and implicitly have affected the well-being of teachers. The present study investigates the psychological reactions of 73 teachers as well as the effectiveness of a psychological intervention applied to 15 teachers, who showed severe psychological reactions during the pandemic period. The motivation of the study derives from the need to offer quick methods and techniques for managing the emotional states they went through. The psychological intervention model presented in the article, aims to reduce the symptoms of stress, anxiety and depression that teachers experience during a pandemic situations, and also to help them apply psychological intervention techniques to regain their well-being). [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Postmodern Openings / Deschideri Postmoderne is the property of Lumen Publishing House and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Assessment of the Emotional State of Parents of Children Starting the Vojta Therapy in the Context of the Physical Activity-A Pilot Study.

The aim of the study was to assess the emotional state of parents at the moment of starting therapy for their children using the Vojta method in the context of the physical activity undertaken by the parents. The study involved 68 parents (37 mothers and 31 fathers) of children with central coordination disorders (CCD) presenting for consultation and therapy using the Vojta method. The authors' questionnaires, the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10), the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9), the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS), and the Inventory to Measure Coping Strategies with Stress (Mini-COPE) were used. As many as 84% of mothers and 77% of fathers presented high level of perceived stress. Comparative analysis showed a statistically significant difference in anxiety and life satisfaction between the groups of mothers and fathers studied. Taking declared physical activity into account, there was a statistically significant difference in stress and anxiety in the mothers' group and a statistically significant difference in mood and life satisfaction in the fathers' group. Promoting physical activity among parents of children with CCD can be helpful in maintaining better psycho-physical conditions and can also be a good tool in combating stress in difficult situations, such as the illness and therapy of a child.

Real Time Smart Music Player Using Facial Expression

According to the World Happiness Report 2021, created by the World Happiness Council, it has ranked 140 countries based on how satisfied their citizens are. Due to COVID-19 pandemic, they observed there was large decline in mental health because of unemployment and decrease inperson gatherings resulting in a decrease in the happiness index of countries. Therefore, in this work we targeted to improve the emotional state of the person and make him happy, by recognizing the persons emotion and plays corresponding music will help user in changing their mood. Music's magical power has been scientifically established and people enjoy listening to music that reflects their emotional feelings, it is a stress-relieving tool and has the ability to control a wide range of psychological states. We used Viola Jones algorithm, Data augmentation and CoAtNet algorithm to detect the emotion of a person. A high accuracy is achieved with proposed CoAtNet model when compared to other methods like Conventional CNN, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and SVM etc. We have also deployed the model on the STM32H747I Board. © 2022 IEEE.

Sentimental Analysis of COVID-19 Tweets Using Semantic Approach

Sentiment analysis is an approach to determine individual's emotional state by investigating text from web. Due to COVID-19 the entire worldwide population was driven by fear of erroneous information across the web. This article explores public opinion and examines people's attitudes and emotions using tweets during the pandemic. To analyze the changes in sentiments and emotions, tweets from Indian users in 2020 were collected during April 11-14, June 4-8, and August 20-24. The proposed work compares TextBlob and NRC Lexicon sentiment analysis methods. TextBlob performs better in sentiment classification whereas the NRC Lexicon technique evaluates emotional states in larger depth. The proposed work examines the sentiment variations from three different tweets time slots and compares the results from both experimental methods. The outcomes from both the methods indicate that neutral sentiments are the majority and positive sentiments overshadow negative sentiments © 2022 IEEE.