Coping with Psychological Crisis under Epidemic Situation

Theme of the meeting: Coping with Psychological Crisis under Epidemic Situation

Date and time: April17th 2020，10:00-12:00(Beijing Time)

Content of the meeting:

1.Alina Natalia Soto Kralina(Head of the Psychosocial and Humanitarian Care Area, Future Team Mexico)The role of psychologists in the adoption of mitigation measures on the emotional health impact of vulnerable groups facing COVID-19

For starters, Miss Alina briefed on how they help reduce negative emotions of certain groups like general people and pregnant women through doing exercise, completing tasks and so on. The purpose is to mitigate negative emotions and recover confidence of those people. Next, she further illustrated by introducing a specific case in which a patient had difficulties in eating and sleeping after searching online about COVID-19. And now, this person is under therapy. Miss Alina mentioned they had helped the patient to relax and shift attentions and they also had told that what she saw online was mostly fake news. Luckily, with help of psychologists, she is now getting better. Finally, the speaker called on all people to give more attention to their psychological health than physical health. Besides, she said that we should judge those online information with our own sharp eyes.

2.Antonio Carmona Garcia (National Coordinator, Future Team Mexico)The role of psychologists in the adoption of mitigation measures on the emotional health impact of vulnerable groups facing COVID-19

First, the speaker quoted a speech from head of WHO mainly about more work should be done on mitigating negative emotions caused by COVID-19. After that, he pointed out four groups easily affected, namely health workers, pregnant, senior citizens and children. In addition, he stressed that they should be paid more attention to and the biggest challenge for them was not in individual level but group level. Despite of wild coronavirus, he proposed at last, we should maintain virtual contact with these people and try our best to help them pick up their exercise routines and recover normal lifestyles.

3. L.N.Julio Uriega future team Mexico Organization member cinema debates as   an aid in emotional expression during the contingency by COVID-19.

Traumatic events, from natural disasters to war, can damage people’s mental health. The COVID-19 is no different. Future team contributes to give support to psychological,mental and emotional well-being. They organized people watched movies together online and encourage them debate. The cinema debates general objects including follows:

Identify and validate emotions.

Promote emotional expression.

Share strategies for life.

Generate sense of community.

Deny myths giving based evidence information.

By watching The Diary Of ANNE Frank(1959), GOOD MORNING VIETNAM (1987), they learned how to get through it under this situation.

4. OKISIO HIKARU:Writing Letters to Senior Citizens who are Living Alone

What we are doing is :1.Write letters 2.print out 3. sent out to social welfare council and to those citizens by volunteers. Why do this activity: Learn from 2018’s earthquake in Osaka that connection is important.Old citizens: loneliness and fear. This activity Will Continue because it’s not only effective for COVID-19.

5. Luo Xiaolin : I You She community development center Eliminate panic and discrimination to promote community trust and friendship Labeling issue:

the regional discrimination inside China and the exclusiveness towards people who return from abroad. Emigrants from Hubei are excluded by others socially; overseas students and workers have some emotional problems and economic problems due to the self-paying quarantine, they refuse to be managed or quarantined.

Strategy: social psychological services to remove panic, regional discrimination and temporary poverty.

I You She community provide social workers and psychological consultants to help.

Cases: health education toward senior citizens who living alone, sent out sanity sources to them.

6. Zhou Tingli (Head of Beijing Aiwude Mental Health Service Center Founder of Live in Group)

Online One-to-One psychological support and companionship: 24 hours hotline offer psychological help, target groups are those general public, media staff and overseas students. Volunteers shift very 3 hours, mobile phone on duty.

Support on Wechat:

(1)medical groups: helping them solve the problem of contacting their colleagues and ease their mental stress.

(2)Patients and their families: provide a platform in Wechat to do the psychological support, with the help of non-profit organizations.

(3)Overseas students: worry about their families and friends, as well as the situations inside China, we provide a platform to ease their stress.

(4)Online support and companion group: towards 1.medical workers in Wuhan Zzhongnan Hospital; 2.psychological consultants; 3.the public; 4.Chinese overseas online support group; 5.enterprises\police\social workers.

Psychoeducation, lectures, supervision:

(1)popularization of psychological knowledge: articles posted in Wechat

(2)lectures on psychology towards groups like medical workers, social workers, overseas students, hotline volunteers.

(3)Supervision: when there is a emergency, volunteers contact the supervisor directly.

7. Masamichi Yoshitsubaki Introduce the CODE organization and the current epidemic situation in Japan. (9156 cases, 204 died, all prefectures declared emergency declaration) CODE is cooperating with many organizations to help those in need during the COVID-19.

CODE Activities for COVID-19

(1)Joining in International alliance for experience learning and sharing it with Japanese NGOs

(2)Hearing and transmitting the situation of CODE’s counterparts

(3)Remote volunteering for the elderly in Suita in collaboration with Osaka University.

(4)Cooperation of a volunteer living in Tokyo

(5)Information sharing with NGOs / NPOs for domestic/overseas

(6)Providing translation work for students in difficult situations.

8. Atzmi:

Professor gave the outline of what they did in the past several months. They held a boarding meeting and then the mission started to help China. As time goes by, the situation in China is under control while it’s getting worse in Japan. They communicated with Chinese Taiwan and take effective measures from the perspective   of social psychology.

9. Discussion Part

Dori is a Chinese who learns Russia. She pays close attention to the pandemic outbreak and what’s happening in Russia. In order to help Russian, she initiated to send messages to them in an effort to provide psychological support. What’s unexpected is that less than ten people replied to the message out of fifty of them. So, she wanted to ask how to let people who is in need of psychological support ask forhelp willingly?

Mrs Zhou from Beijing suggested that, for starters, there is a big difference between culture backgrounds. She needs to know what they really need in the face of pandemic outbreak. Secondly, the service is about emergency aids instead of consultation; Besides she needs to have targeted group. Many people hold hatred against the Chinese and China due to this outbreak, she needs to win their trust before help them. What she can do directly is to send them the articles about how to protect themselves from COVID-19, or psychological tips to ease their anxiety. It’s understandable that they didn’t reply because they got panicked and didn’t know what to do.

Recorders of the meeting:

Ma Hui

Jin Yue

Li Jialin

Ma Gang