Healthcare Personnel Peer Support and Crisis Intervention via Social Media and Traditional Hot-line During COVID Pandemic

Pu Cheng

Abstract

Healthcare personnel are at the front line fighting COVID, under tremendous pressure and sustain severe mental stress, leading to burn out and mental health crisis, contributing to healthcare system meltdown. This presentation describes two peer support projects developed and carried out by a group of experienced mental health professionals, to address this mental health crisis by providing psychological support via different approaches. The first project was to offer peer psychological support via a novel method of popular social media from overseas to healthcare professionals on the frontline of the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, China. The second project is providing even larger scale but more a traditional method of US national hotline dedicated to front line physicians. Both models for intervention can be used elsewhere in the face of current global pandemic, or future disaster response, to improve healthcare personnel mental health during stressful environment, hence to contribute to the sustainability of public health.