An evaluation of providing psychological interventions during coronavirus disease (COVID-19): a narrative review

The outbreak of the new coronavirus (COVID 19) is a global public health crisis that began in January 2020. This study aimed to investigate previous research to find effective psychological interventions and also to provide practical solutions for correct interventions in crisis.

This article is based on narrative reviews from January 1 to April 1, 2020. The search terms were 2019 novel coronavirus, medical as well as nursing staff, crisis intervention, new coronavirus outbreak, COVID -19, contagious disease outbreak, crisis services, defense mechanisms, personality, and crisis. Literature for this review was identified by searching the following online databases: PubMed, Science Direct, Scopus, Google Scholar, as well as ProQuest, and the most popular internal databases such as SID, IranMedex, and MagIran. The research was conducted in both English and Persian. Also, some online published papers by the National Health Commission of China, the National Center for Disease Prevention and Control, and the World Health Organization (WHO) were searched.

In total, out of 200 English articles on psychological interventions in crises, 35 were eligible and reviewed for this study.

Based on the review of existing articles, it was found that unique telephone lines and online psychological services play an essential role in maintaining and increasing peoplechr('39')s mental health at the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak. Besides, it has a more critical role than face-to-face psychological interventions.