Projects

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1. C19 MentalHealthNet

The COVID-19 Mental Health Research Network 

Project leaders: Soraya Seedat & Nancy Kassam-Adams

Project completed, find details here.

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2. Traumatic Stress and Adversity Faced by COVID-19 Frontline Healthcare Workers and Mental Healthcare Providers

Project leader:  Julian Ford

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Study A

Temporal trends in health worker social media communication during the COVID-19 pandemic – Text Mining Approach 

Project completed, find details here.

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Study B

Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health and human services providers – An international Global Collaboration on Psychotrauma survey 

Study group: Julian Ford, Rocio Chang, Ramez Dagher, Daniel Eichert, Damion Grasso, Wissam El Hage, Patricia Kerig, Tomoko Kishimoto, Chris Kristensen, Davide Marengo, Joshua Mersky, Misari Oe, Andrea Phelps, Sami Richa, Carolina Salgado, Soraya Seedat, Patricia Correia Santos, Chaoran Sun, Ulrich Schnyder, James Topitzes

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Aims 

As we enter the fourth year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the impact on healthcare workers and organizations is well recognized – but the toll on mental health and human services counselors in practice and in training has never been systematically evaluated.

Using a Qualtrics platform for secure data acquisition and privacy protection the survey of mental health providers from multiple disciplines is being done by an international team of traumatic stress from Australia, Brazil, China, France, Italy, Japan, Portugal, and the United States,  beginning two years after the start of the pandemic (June 2022) with repeated waves every 6 months.

Survey items include: (1) sociodemographics, (2) a newly developed measure of personal and social impacts of the pandemic for mental health providers (EPII-Brief and-MH; Grasso et al., 2021), (3) depression and anxiety symptoms, (4) trauma history and PTSD symptoms (Global Psychotrauma Screen), (5) CPTSD DSO symptoms (International Trauma Questionnaire) (6) moral injury symptoms, (7) experiential avoidance symptoms, (8) secondary traumatic stress reactions, (9) burnout symptoms, (10) resiliency factors, and (11) social support (~200 items, 20-30 minute estimated completion time). Translation into multiple languages is done by co-investigators.

Descriptive statistics, correlations, linear regression, and tests of group differences will be conducted with SPSS and Mathworks Inc. Matlab. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses (EFA/CFA) and latent class and growth analyses will be conducted using MPlus software.

Moderators (e.g., nationality; training; sociodemographics, practice setting) and mediators (e.g., trauma/loss exposure, prior wave symptoms/support) will be tested, with a target sample size of up to N=3,000.

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Mental health providers: 

please access the survey here! 

The survey is designed for mental and behavioral health counseling, social work legal/forensic, and marriage and family therapy professionals and paraprofessionals (including pre-professional trainees).  

The survey is anonymous to ensure privacy, with brief, well validated and meaningful measures. Please circulate this invitation and link to other colleagues who might be interested in participating. 

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So far, more than 1000 mental health and social work professionals internationally have completed the survey, and a second cohort is beginning in Africa, Australia, and Singapore.

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For more information on these projects, please contact Julian Ford 

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Study Related Publications

• Grasso, D. J., Briggs‐Gowan, M. J., Carter, A. S., Goldstein, B. L., & Ford, J. D. (2021). Profiling COVID‐related experiences in the United States with the Epidemic‐Pandemic Impacts Inventory: Linkages to psychosocial functioning. Brain and Behavior, e02197. https://doi.org/10.1002/brb3.2197

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3. Stressors, coping and symptoms of adjustment disorder in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic 

Project leaders: Annett Lotzin & Ingo Schäfer on behalf of ESTSS

Project group members: Helene Flood Aakvaag, Elena Acquarini, Dean Ajdukovic, Vittoria Ardino, Maria Böttche, Kristina Bondjers, Maria Bragesjö, Małgorzata Dragan, Piotr Grajewski, Margarida Figueiredo-Braga, Odeta Gelezelyte, Jana Darejan Javakhishvili, Evaldas Kazlauskas, Matthias Knefel, Brigitte Lueger-Schuster, Nino Makhashvili, Trudy Mooren, Luisa Sales, and Aleksandra Stevanovic. Please contact Annett Lotzin if you are interested in joining the study.

 

Aims and method

The primary aim of this longitudinal cohort study launched by the European Society of Traumatic Stress Studies (ESTSS) was to examine the relationships between risk and resilience factors, stressors and adjustment disorder symptoms during the pandemic, and to investigate whether these relationships were moderated by coping behaviors. All data were assessed by an online-questionnaire longitudinally, with an interval of six months. Following a conceptual framework based on the WHO’s social framework of health, an assessment of individual and country-level risk and resilience factors, COVID-19 related stressors and pandemic-specific coping behavior were measured to estimate their contribution to symptoms of adverse adjustment. Primary measure: adjustment disorder symptoms (ADNM-8). Secondary measure: Posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms (PC-PTSD-5).

 

Results

From June to November 2020, 15,563 adults from eleven countries (Austria, Croatia, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, and Sweden) participated in this study. Several risk and protective factors as well as pandemic-related stressors were identified.

 

Study publications can be accessed here.

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4. High-risk occupational groups responding to the COVID-19 pandemic

Project leaders: Talya Greene, Jo Billings, Michael Bloomfield

Project members: tbd

 

Aims and method

It is essential that the psychological response to the COVID-19 outbreak is coordinated, trauma-informed and evidence-based. This project aims to collate and develop globally transferable guidance for the psychosocial support of high-risk occupational groups responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. These groups include healthcare workers (e.g., doctors, nurses, technicians, porters, paramedics, hospital administrators), other essential workers (e.g., social workers, care home staff, cleaners, delivery workers), and their family members. Guidance should be evidence-based and is focused on which interventions are likely to be helpful, and which may be harmful, in coping with peritraumatic stress exposure, and mitigating long-term trauma reactions.

• Interview with Dr Greene:  "Clap for Carers" and other empty promises​

• Billings, J., Greene, T., Kember, T., Grey, N., El-Leithy, S., Lee, D., ... & Bloomfield, M. A. (2020). Supporting hospital staff during COVID-19: Early interventions. Occupational Medicine. DOI: 10.1093/occmed/kqaa098

• Greene, T., Bloomfield, M. A., & Billings, J. (2020). Psychological trauma and moral injury in religious leaders during COVID-19. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 12(1), 143-145. DOI: 10.1037/tra0000641

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5. Posttraumatic adjustment in nurses

Project leader: Prof Dr Judith Daniels (j.k.daniels@rug.nl)

Project completed, find details here.