Self-compassion buffers the impact of learned helplessness on adverse mental health during COVID-19 lockdown.

BACKGROUND: Learned helplessness may be the underlying cause of poor mental health status among college students during the COVID-19 lockdown, and self-compassion as a positive psychological quality may influence the link between learned helplessness and mental health. METHODS: A sample of 869 Chinese college students (443 male and 426 female), with a mean age of 20.03 (SD = 1.68), completed the Learned Helplessness Scale (LHS), Self-Compassion Scale (SCS), and DASS-21. The moderating effect of self-compassion on the relationship between learned helplessness and anxiety, depression, and stress were calculated. RESULTS: The interaction term between learned helplessness and self-compassion has a significant coefficient on anxiety, depression, and stress, pointing out self-compassion as a moderator of the association between learned helplessness and adverse mental health. LIMITATIONS: In the absence of longitudinal data or experimental manipulations, cross-sectional methods cannot verify causal conclusions among the study variables. The analysing results are based only on self-reported data. DISCUSSION: The present study contributes to a deeper understanding of how learned helplessness and self-compassion during COVID-19 contribute to adverse mental health. The findings suggest that adverse mental health during lockdown is significantly associated with learned helplessness and that self-compassion can buffer this effect, contributing to future psychotherapy and clinical research. Future studies should examine the relationship through a longitudinal design to sort out whether self-compassion is a protective factor against learned helplessness or a moderator of the effects of learned helplessness on mental health.

[Health professionals facing the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic: What are the mental health risks?] / Les professionnels de santé face à la pandémie de la maladie à coronavirus (COVID-19) : quels risques pour leur santé mentale ?

OBJECTIVES: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused major sanitary crisis worldwide. Half of the world has been placed in quarantine. In France, this large-scale health crisis urgently triggered the restructuring and reorganization of health service delivery to support emergency services, medical intensive care units and continuing care units. Health professionals mobilized all their resources to provide emergency aid in a general climate of uncertainty. Concerns about the mental health, psychological adjustment, and recovery of health care workers treating and caring for patients with COVID-19 are now arising. The goal of the present article is to provide up-to-date information on potential mental health risks associated with exposure of health professionals to the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: Authors performed a narrative review identifying relevant results in the scientific and medical literature considering previous epidemics of 2003 (SARS-CoV-1) and 2009 (H1N1) with the more recent data about the COVID-19 pandemic. We highlighted most relevant data concerning the disease characteristics, the organizational factors and personal factors that may contribute to developing psychological distress and other mental health symptoms. RESULTS: The disease characteristics of the current COVID-19 pandemic provoked a generalized climate of wariness and uncertainty, particularly among health professionals, due to a range of causes such as the rapid spread of COVID-19, the severity of symptoms it can cause in a segment of infected individuals, the lack of knowledge of the disease, and deaths among health professionals. Stress may also be caused by organizational factors, such as depletion of personal protection equipment, concerns about not being able to provide competent care if deployed to new area, concerns about rapidly changing information, lack of access to up-to-date information and communication, lack of specific drugs, the shortage of ventilators and intensive care unit beds necessary to care for the surge of critically ill patients, and significant change in their daily social and family life. Further risk factors have been identified, including feelings of being inadequately supported, concerns about health of self, fear of taking home infection to family members or others, and not having rapid access to testing through occupational health if needed, being isolated, feelings of uncertainty and social stigmatization, overwhelming workload, or insecure attachment. Additionally, we discussed positive social and organizational factors that contribute to enhance resilience in the face of the pandemic. There is a consensus in all the relevant literature that health care professionals are at an increased risk of high levels of stress, anxiety, depression, burnout, addiction and post-traumatic stress disorder, which could have long-term psychological implications. CONCLUSIONS: In the long run, this tragic health crisis should significantly enhance our understanding of the mental health risk factors among the health care professionals facing the COVID-19 pandemic. Reporting information such as this is essential to plan future prevention strategies. Protecting health care professionals is indeed an important component of public health measures to address large-scale health crisis. Thus, interventions to promote mental well-being in health care professionals exposed to COVID-19 need to be immediately implemented, and to strengthen prevention and response strategies by training health care professionals on mental help and crisis management.

COVID-19, suicide, and femicide: Rapid Research using Google search phrases.

Psychologist Eric Miller of Kent State University has termed COVID-19 "the Loss and Trauma Event of Our Time." In this paper, I would like to problematize the public health response to the virus outbreak in light of two consequential and preventable traumas that shadow the COVID-19 calamity: femicide and suicide. As public health reaction to the pandemic is seen to negatively increase rates of domestic violence and suicidality this research accessed rapidly available data using Google Date Range analysis by utilizing queries from pre- and post-pandemic comprising the months of March-August in the years 2019 and 2020. The aim of this rapid-response research is to glimpse the possible presence of psychological stress in online searches that relate to debilitation in the four foundational strata of Maslow's Hierarchy of Human needs (basic and psychological needs). To search basic needs related to COVID-19 the following categories were utilized in online search phrases in Google (US): precarity and insecurity. To search basic and psychological needs related to suicide the following categories were utilized in online search phrases in Google (US): despondency and helplessness. Finally, to search basic and psychological needs related to femicide the following categories were utilized in online search phrases in Google (US): indicative male violence and intentional male violence. Results show an overwhelming upsurge from all six categories from 31% to 106%.