Coronavirus, Omceo Rome: “In fall pandemic for mental health”

“Our colleagues if they need help ask for it. At the moment, doctors are still immersed in managing the pandemic, but in the fall we should instead expect an increase in requests for support” psychological. This was said by Maria Rosa Scalise, coordinator of the commission ‘Mental Health’ of the Order of Surgeons and Dentists (Omceo) of Rome and province, as well as’ coordinator of the working group ‘Let’Let&#8217s treat those who treat and risk life’ formed by 85 psychiatrists and psychotherapists active since early April.

Physicians who have been working in the emergency

“Doctors who have worked in the emergency are continuing to do so, both in the Covid and post-Covid settings, with shifts of even twice a day”. Scalise is’enrolled“in various support groups, and the most active colleagues speak mostly of difficult and stressful shifts. Even those who have fallen ill”.

The trend, therefore, in the psychological resilience of health workers in recent months“has been to keep fears to themselves’-explains the Omceo Rome councilwoman-which is why I share the alarm sounded in early May by the director-general of the WHO: the real pandemic will be’the one to come and it will concern mental health”.

According to the psychiatrist, in fact, “as the number of infections declines and the return to a ‘pseudo-normality” physicians may begin to share the fears experienced during the months of the emergency, the’anxiety of death and of seeing people die”. To date, the Fnomceo reports that there have been about 170 doctors nationwide who have died from Coronavirus.

a pandemic is’a highly stressful event

“Really many– comments Scalise– and it&#8217s hard for a colleague to see that among the doctors who fell in the course of the Covid-19 outbreak were people he knew. The pandemic is’a highly stressful event, which will be followed, as per psychiatric nosography, by post-traumatic stress disorder also caused by the continuous confrontation with death.

These issues will come to the surface when the real emergency is over and a more’normal or less normal life begins. L’Omceo Roma is’equipped to deal with them- concludes the councilwoman-and I hope the working group will remain’active throughout 2020”.