Adapting mental health care after the COVID-19 outbreak: Preliminary findings from a public general hospital in Madrid (Spain)

ABSTRACT

This letter discusses mental health care after the COVID-19 outbreak by presenting preliminary findings from a public general hospital in Madrid. The pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 poses a major challenge for national health systems around the globe. In these situations, healthcare centers are urged to adjust their structures to the demands of the outbreak in order to protect both the users and the workers. However, this emergency has no precedent in the recent history, and entire hospitals and clinics need further adaptations for which there is no previous evidence. This affects mental healthcare teams, which deal with the unknown psychological consequences of an overwhelming, global crisis. La Paz University Hospital is a public general hospital that provides healthcare to a catchment area of more than half a million people in Madrid. So far, more than 2,700 confirmed cases of SARS-CoV-2 have been attended in this hospital, which required a complete restructuring process. A few days after the outbreak, its mental health team managed to develop a COVID-19 intervention protocol that was based on its previous experience during the 2014 Ebola crisis in Madrid and on the reports that were coming from China. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)