COVID-19 Guidelines

COVID-19 Pandemic and Mental Health: Experiences of Organising Services at a Mental Health Care Institution

A monograph by AIIMS, New Delhi

The Department of Psychiatry & National Drug Dependence Treatment Centre (NDDTC), All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi has published a monograph ‘Covid-19 pandemic and Mental Health: Experiences of Organising Services at a Mental Health Care Institution’.

The monograph includes a collection of articles, writings, experiences, discussions about strategies and activities they adopted to overcome the challenges of COVID-19 and could potentially serve as a model for continued functioning of mental health services in a tertiary care set up in a pandemic situation in future.

The monograph has four sections:

I. Academic papers and commentaries on various areas of service delivery/various services provided by the Department of Psychiatry and NDDTC during the pandemic. The learnings/teachings/challenges in the process of developing or delivery of services are included.

II. Literary-academic-creative contributions rooted in COVID-19 theme. This section has writings from the residents and faculty members including any psychological- philosophical insights of relevance to pandemic, personal-professional narratives and creative write-ups, poems, art/painting, humanistic story and relevant irony/humor.

III. Published research (original, reviews, letters etc.) from the department and NDDTC with COVID-19 theme, reproduced with prior permission from journal editors.

IV. Resource material related to COVID 19 developed by the department.

Psychosocial First Aid for children affected by COVID-19: A manual for first responders

NIMHANS in collaboration with UNICEF India, has published this manual to inform users about Psychosocial First Aid (PFA), and thereafter equip and empower them with basic tools and skills to provide PFA after identifying vulnerable children in the context of Covid-19. The manual aims to target first responders such as counselors, social workers and mental health professionals.

The ‘Management of COVID-19 in Children’ guidelines are published by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, GoI

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India, has launched the ‘Management of Covid 19 in Children’ guidelines. The document clearly describes and illustrates the clinical features, its stages, the required corresponding investigations and the subsequent management protocols to be followed.

The ICMR’s manual for Health Care Professionals to provide Psychosocial Support to family members in bereavement in the time of COVID-19

The manual published by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), targets healthcare professionals working with bereaved relatives / families of their COVID-19 patients who are either no more or at increased risk of death. The guidelines aim to provide quick direction and support to clinicians when disclosing the news of death to the family; on providing immediate psycho-social (incl. emotional) support to grieving family members; and to help clinicians cope with their own emotional reactions.