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Abstract
The exceptional circumstances of the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic are making the grief processes challenging for families who are losing a relative for COVID-19. This community case study aimed to describe a phone-based primary preventive psychological intervention that has been delivered to these families by the Clinical Psychology unit of an Italian hospital. In particular, the article reports how the intervention has been organized within the overall hospital care pathway for families, the specific contents and components of the intervention, and the seven-phase structure of the intervention. The unique features and related challenges of the intervention, along with the implications for clinical practice, are discussed.
Highlights
The Coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic has been generating a global health crisis, with overall death rates surpassing 1.1 million people worldwide and continuously increasing, as of 28th October 2020 [1]
The unexpectedness of the loss has been proved to explain stronger grief reactions among family members who have lived a COVID-19 related loss than among those who have lived a natural loss, to what happens after unnatural losses [2] the families experiencing a loss in an intensive care unit can be affected by the loss: end of life care can proceed fast and this can challenge the possibility to obtain timely, consistent, and clear information [3]
The phonebased early psychological intervention that emerged from the hospital work with COVID-19 patients and bereaved families appears to be more close, due to its timing, functions, and format, to a bereavement follow-up as part of the hospital care
Summary
The Coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic has been generating a global health crisis, with overall death rates surpassing 1.1 million people worldwide and continuously increasing, as of 28th October 2020 [1]. Number of simultaneous deaths and of living the safety measures in place against the virus To face this double need of early assessing and supporting bereaved families and lightening the workload of clinicians, the clinical psychology unit decided to deliver a phone-based early psychological intervention to all the families of COVID-19 deceased patients, about 48–72 h after the family received notification of the death of the loved one from the hospital clinician. It may be positioned as a primary preventive intervention within a stepped care model, where different professionals were involved in different bereavement care phases: [1] the communication of the death, [2] the management of practical aspects related to the death, [3] the primary preventive phone-based psychological intervention, and, eventually, [4] the community-based psychotherapeutic intervention The psychologists delivering it were not involved in the support of the dying patients affected by COVID-19. The psychologists used different strategies to empathize/go closer to the respondent (e.g., by paying attention on the tone of voice, rhythm, and warmness in their voice, by slowing the speaking rate) or to take distance (e.g., by referring to other resources, by stressing the purpose of the call, by introducing some pauses in dialogue)
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