WASP Webinar - Mental Health, Well Being, and Social Psychiatry: Challenges Imposed by the Covid-19 Pandemic Friday, 18 September 2020 Contribution by Vincenzo Di Nicola, WASP President-Elect "Mental Health and Well Being in the Covid-19 Era" Objectives: 1. To offer an overview of the mental health consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, focusing on vulnerable populations 2. To highlight factors that foster well being in individuals, families, and communities

1. WASP Webinar
MENTAL HEALTH, WELL BEING,
AND SOCIAL PSYCHIATRY
Challenges Imposed by the
Covid-19 Pandemic
FRIDAY, 18 SEPTEMBER 2020
2:00 – 3:30 GMT
10:00 – 11:30 EST

3. WASP Webinar
MENTAL HEALTH & WELL BEING
IN THE COVID-19 ERA
VINCENZO DI NICOLA
MPhil, MD, PhD, FRCPC, DFAPA, FCPA
President, CASP
President-Elect, WASP
Professor of Psychiatry
University of Montreal

4. Conflicts of Interest
The presenter has no financial conflicts of
interest to declare.

5. Objectives
To offer an overview of the mental health
consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic,
focusing on vulnerable populations
To highlight factors that foster well being
in individuals, families, and communities

6. Defining Social Psychiatry
Social psychiatry is concerned with the
relationships between mental disorder
and sociocultural processes.
– Alexander Leighton (1960)
Now we need to add the natural world
– disasters, climate change, pandemics

7. Covid-19 Pandemic
Pandemic biomedical & psychosocial strategies:
PPE – Personal Protective Equipment
Confinement
“Social” distancing – critique why not physical
or personal distancing?
Covid-19 testing and contact tracing
Lockdown

8. Covid-19 Pandemic
Psychosocial issues:
Compliance with restrictive measures
Understanding risk –
panic/denial/politicization
Impact on caregivers
Bereavement

9. Army trucks in Bergamo, Italy (Reuters – March 19, 2020)

10. Antigone and Polynices (Nikiforos Lytras, 1865)

11. Incident at Antares
Érico Veríssimo
(Novel, 1971)
Carlos Manga
(Film, 1994)

12. Impacts
Social distancing
Class and cultural differences
Confinement
Impact on vulnerable groups, relationships

13. Impacts
Adverse Child Events (ACE)
Associated with poorer health outcomes
Ref: Di Nicola & Daly, Growing up in a
pandemic. World Soc Psychiatry, 2020
* This is a generation marked by the pandemic
Rapid, massive change
Social & cultural psychiatry
Cf. Bruce Mau, Massive Change

14. Interventions
Interventions to mitigate the potentially
harmful consequences of quarantine (Italian
study – de Girolamo & associates)
Self-help groups may play a pivotal role (de
Girolamo & associates)
Brazilian model of ICT – Integrative
Community Therapy (Barreto & associates)

15. Integrative Community Therapy (ICT)
ICT – a psychosocial intervention implemented
in contexts marked by the rupture of social
bonds
Promotes community resilience and the
empowerment of persons and groups

16. Integrative Community Therapy (ICT)
Transforming adverse experiences by
nourishing individual and collective growth,
based on knowledge constructed through
their life experiences
Results: effective psychosocial intervention in
primary healthcare by promoting health,
quality of life

17. Lessons Learned
E-health useful, to be developed
Interventions are needed to mitigate the
potentially harmful consequences of
quarantine
Leadership position in the psychosocial
management of disaster type situations
(Italian study – de Girolamo & associates)

18. Lessons Learned
Specialized skills:
Correctly inform the population about risk
Train and disseminate effective preventive and
management procedures for disasters,
pandemics
Support health personnel and rescuers
Support those experiencing bereavement
(Italian study – de Girolamo & associates)

19. Conclusion
The challenge of 21st century Social Psychiatry
Reference: V Di Nicola,
“A person is a person through other persons”:
A Social Psychiatry manifesto for the 21st century.
World Social Psychiatry, 2019, 1(1): 8-21.

20. Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu
“A person is a person
through other persons”
– Zulu saying

21. The community stagnates without
the impulse of the individual.
The impulse dies away without the
sympathy of the community.
– William James (1890)

23. Resources
American Academy for Child & Adolescent
Psychiatry (AACAP) – www.aacap.org
Resources for Helping Kids and Parents
Cope Amidst COVID-19
https://www.aacap.org/AACAP/Families_and_Yo
uth/Resource_Libraries/covid-
19/resources_helping_kids_parents_cope.aspx?
utm_source=Informz&utm_medium=email&utm_
campaign=Annual%20Meeting

24. References
Barreto AP, Filha MO, Silva MZ, Di Nicola V.
Integrative Community Therapy in the Time of
the New Coronavirus Pandemic in Brazil and
Latin America. World Soc Psychiatry
2020;2:103-5. DOI: 10.4103/WSP.WSP_46_20
de Girolamo G, Cerveri G, Clerici M, et al.
Mental Health in the Coronavirus Disease
2019 Emergency—The Italian Response. JAMA
Psychiatry. 2020;77(9):974–976. DOI:
10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2020.1276

25. References
Di Nicola, V. “A person is a person through
other persons”: A Social Psychiatry manifesto
for the 21st century. World Social Psychiatry,
2019, 1(1): 8-21.
Di Nicola V, Daly N. Growing up in a Pandemic:
Biomedical and Psychosocial Impacts of the
COVID-19 Crisis on Children and Families.
World Soc Psychiatry, 2020, 2(2): 148-51

26. References
Leighton AH. An Introduction to Social
Psychiatry. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas,
1960.
Mau, B. Massive Change. London: Phaidon
Press, 2004.