Psychiatry for Better World: COVID-19 and Blame Games People Play from Public and Global Metal Health Perspective.

Blame games tend to follow crisis, be they at local, national or international level related to political, financial or health issues. COVID-19 crisis from the very beginning has been followed by divisive and disruptive psychosocial and political blame games. Active or passive blaming is an inherent feature of human beings in order to shift responsibilities onto others, single out a culprit, find a scapegoat and pinpoint a target. Finger pointing, blame games and scapegoating are associated with creation of binaries that identify agency as good or bad, right or wrong, moral or immoral. The scapegoat is expectedly always bad, wrong and immoral, commonly black evil. The detrimental effects of the COVID-19 blame games are seen in a lack of cohesion and coherence in the anti-COVID-19 solving strategies. Fighting the COVID-19 crisis all countries and nations need to join efforts on defeating it and to shift from a destructive blaming and zero-sum type of thinking to a much more creative, systemic and humanistic type. Effective response to COVID-19 is related to sowing the seeds for humanistic self and empathic civilization, rather than blaming, scapegoating and xenophobia.

The Importance of Psychodynamic Approach during COVID-19 Pandemic.

The coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak was labeled a global pandemic by the WHO in March of 2020. Understanding how crisis influence an individual's reactions to stressful events (and vice versa) is important in order to create meaningful and effective interventions. Our literature search have revealed lack of the papers related to psychodynamic approach to recent crisis. Psychodynamic places a large emphasis on defense mechanisms and unconscious mind, where upsetting feelings, urges, and thoughts that are too painful for us to directly look at are housed. Even though these painful feelings and thoughts are outside of our awareness, they still influence our behavior in many ways. Optimal application of psychodynamic approach offers the frame for acceptance of psychological stress in a more positive way and benefits psychological growth. We believe that including psychodynamic approach in the national public and mental health emergency system will empower Croatia and the world during (and after) COVID-19 pandemic crisis.

The effect of different degrees of lockdown and self-identified gender on anxiety, depression and suicidality during the COVID-19 pandemic: Data from the international COMET-G study.

INTRODUCTION: During the COVID-19 pandemic various degrees of lockdown were applied by countries around the world. It is considered that such measures have an adverse effect on mental health but the relationship of measure intensity with the mental health effect has not been thoroughly studied. Here we report data from the larger COMET-G study pertaining to this question. MATERIAL AND METHODS: During the COVID-19 pandemic, data were gathered with an online questionnaire from 55,589 participants from 40 countries (64.85% females aged 35.80 ± 13.61; 34.05% males aged 34.90±13.29 and 1.10% other aged 31.64±13.15). Anxiety was measured with the STAI, depression with the CES-D and suicidality with the RASS. Distress and probable depression were identified with the use of a previously developed cut-off and algorithm respectively. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS: It included the calculation of Relative Risk (RR), Factorial ANOVA and Multiple backwards stepwise linear regression analysis RESULTS: Approximately two-thirds were currently living under significant restrictions due to lockdown. For both males and females the risk to develop clinical depression correlated significantly with each and every level of increasing lockdown degree (RR 1.72 and 1.90 respectively). The combined lockdown and psychiatric history increased RR to 6.88 The overall relationship of lockdown with severity of depression, though significant was small. CONCLUSIONS: The current study is the first which reports an almost linear relationship between lockdown degree and effect in mental health. Our findings, support previous suggestions concerning the need for a proactive targeted intervention to protect mental health more specifically in vulnerable groups.

Results of the COVID-19 mental health international for the general population (COMET-G) study.

INTRODUCTION: There are few published empirical data on the effects of COVID-19 on mental health, and until now, there is no large international study. MATERIAL AND METHODS: During the COVID-19 pandemic, an online questionnaire gathered data from 55,589 participants from 40 countries (64.85% females aged 35.80 ± 13.61; 34.05% males aged 34.90±13.29 and 1.10% other aged 31.64±13.15). Distress and probable depression were identified with the use of a previously developed cut-off and algorithm respectively. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS: Descriptive statistics were calculated. Chi-square tests, multiple forward stepwise linear regression analyses and Factorial Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) tested relations among variables. RESULTS: Probable depression was detected in 17.80% and distress in 16.71%. A significant percentage reported a deterioration in mental state, family dynamics and everyday lifestyle. Persons with a history of mental disorders had higher rates of current depression (31.82% vs. 13.07%). At least half of participants were accepting (at least to a moderate degree) a non-bizarre conspiracy. The highest Relative Risk (RR) to develop depression was associated with history of Bipolar disorder and self-harm/attempts (RR = 5.88). Suicidality was not increased in persons without a history of any mental disorder. Based on these results a model was developed. CONCLUSIONS: The final model revealed multiple vulnerabilities and an interplay leading from simple anxiety to probable depression and suicidality through distress. This could be of practical utility since many of these factors are modifiable. Future research and interventions should specifically focus on them.

COVID-19 Infodemic and Public Trust from the Perspective of Public and Global Mental Health.

Crisis usually involves participants who trust and distrust each other, commonly in the same time. COVID-19 infodemic induced confidence crisis and distrust in authorities, science communities, governments and institutions can lead to harmful health behaviors and ill mental health and become a serious threat to public and global mental health as another kind of virus. Distrust mentality, conspiracy thinking and blame games may have detrimental effects not just on the individual level, but on the level of the whole groups, communities and global world. Public distrust and mistrust are related to the crisis in the domain of social and political relations, not only on the same country level, but also between different countries at regional or global level. Dynamics between public trust and mental health is a complex and bidirectional, ill mental health is causing and enhancing the inclination to confidence crisis, distrust, conspiracy theories and blame games and vice versa confidence crisis, distrust, conspiracy thinking and blame games are leading to ill mental health. It is important to have a holistic transdisciplinary integrative understanding of these dynamics and science-based treatment and prevention.

COVID-19 Pandemia and Public and Global Mental Health from the Perspective of Global Health Securit.

The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic emerged in Wuhan, China and has spread all over the world and has caused huge threats to health and lives. It has affected different frontiers of lives and induced many psychiatric individual and collective problems such as panic, anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorders, suspiciousness, infodemia, cacophony, xenophobia, racisms, etc. The COVID-19 outbreak has induced public and global mental health crisis as well as a huge psycho-social experiment. Psychiatry and other mental health sciences can play very useful role in supporting the well-being of COVID-19 patients and their families, healthcare personnel and the society. For successful fighting with present and future pandemics we have to learn more about psychiatric and psychological aspects of COVID-19 from the perspectives of public and global mental health.