Telepsychiatry to Provide Mental Health Support to Healthcare Professionals during the COVID-19 Crisis: A Cross-Sectional Survey among 321 Healthcare Professionals in France.

Clément Cormi,Aude Letty,Stéphane Sanchez,Emmanuel Mulin,Valentine de l’Estoile,Laura Ollivier,Gilles Berrut

doi:10.3390/ijerph181910146

Abstract

Pandemics are difficult times for the mental health of healthcare professionals, who are more likely to present with PTSD-like symptoms. In the context of a highly contagious communicable disease, telemedicine is a useful alternative to usual care, and should be considered as a means to support healthcare professionals’ mental health. This is a multicenter (n = 19), cross-sectional study, based on a 27-item questionnaire, aiming to investigate the acceptability to healthcare workers of a telepsychiatry service as a means of providing mental health support during the COVID-19 pandemic. Between October and December 2020, 321 responses were received, showing that women, caregiving staff, and those directly involved in the care of COVID-19 patients are less favorable to the idea of receiving remote support. In our population, barriers were related to the clinical setting or ethics, and most of the respondents would not accept a drug prescription by telepsychiatry. Although telepsychiatry should be a part of the armamentarium of mental health management, it is not suitable as a stand-alone approach, and should be combined with conventional face-to-face consultations.

Highlights

The socio-demographic characteristics of the study population are shown in Table 1, and the full results are presented in Overall, age was found to be significantly associated with the perception of teleconsultations (p = 0.037) and technological tools (p = 0.001), while female sex negatively impacted on the perception of teleconsultations (OR: 0.37 [95% confidence interval (CI): 0.17–0.84])
This study aimed to assess the acceptability of mental health support via telepsychiatry for healthcare workers (HCWs) in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic
Our results show that caregiving staff and those directly involved in the care of COVID-19 patients are less favourable to the idea of receiving remote support

Summary

Introduction

A new coronavirus disease emerged in December 2019 in China [1] and by March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) had already qualified the 2019 coronavirus disease, namely COVID-19, as a pandemic [2]. Since the 20th century, the question of the mental health of frontline healthcare workers (HCWs) during epidemics has garnered increasing attention. During the Spanish influenza pandemic of 1919, there were published descriptions of the physical consequences for HCWs involved in patient management [4], but few data about the impact of the pandemic on the mental health of HCWs. During the epidemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003, some studies reported the prevalence of mental health symptoms and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among frontline HCWs to be between 17% and

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