Across the country, psychiatrists are stepping up to provide urgent care to fellow health care workers in need amid the coronavirus pandemic. They’re offering stress management strategies, spearheading unusual partnerships, and discovering that psychotherapy and medication might not be their most helpful tools to help their colleagues at this time.
Dr. Allison Cotton
“This is completely the opposite of the way we practice psychiatry,” said Allison Cotton, MD, of the University of Nevada, Reno. “Our interventions are quite different from a psychotherapeutic standpoint.”
In March, she worked with four colleagues, Suzan Song, MD, MPH, PhD; Ben Cheng, MD; Smita Gautam, MD; and Mona S. Masood, DO, to create the Physician Support Line, a confidential and free hotline that links physicians to volunteer psychiatrists who are available to listen and offer advice on coping. The hotline (888-409-0141) is available every day from 8 a.m. to midnight Eastern time. Calls typically take 15-45 minutes; no appointment is needed, and conversations are not reportable to state medical boards.
Courtesy Dr. Allison Cotton
Five psychiatrists founded the Physician Support Line, a confidential hotline for doctors trying to cope with the pandemic. They are (clockwise from top left): Suzan Song, MD; Allison Cotton, MD; Ben Cheng, MD; Smita Gautam, MD; and Mona S. Masood, DO.
“The calls can be very intense,” Dr. Cotton said, and they’re unusual for several reasons. The hotline is not like a suicide or crisis hotline, when “a person calls because they need help, and then they can go get that help – they go to the hospital and get admitted to a psychiatric unit. Our callers don’t have that luxury.”
It’s also impossible to take an extensive history and create a sophisticated, long-term treatment plan as psychiatrists would during normal office visits. At the hotline, Dr. Cotton said, “we’re really focusing on the caller’s strengths and helping them come up with a plan for today to get through whatever they’re facing,” she said.
Stress management is critical
Psychiatrists at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus are embracing a similar approach to help health care workers cope, said Steven Berkowitz, MD. “We focus on stress management, and the notion that they are generally healthy and understandably struggling with extraordinary circumstances,” he said. “We are conservative in our use of medications and really only prescribe medications, such as trazodone, to help with sleep. We do not use benzodiazepines unless there is a history of more severe psychiatric problems.”
Dr. Steven Berkowitz
The pressure on health care workers during the pandemic is intense. A survey of 1,257 workers in 34 Chinese hospitals found high levels of symptoms of depression (50%), anxiety (45%), insomnia (35%), and distress (72%). Several groups appeared to be more vulnerable: women, nurses, front-line health care workers, and those in the coronavirus-stricken city of Wuhan (JAMA Netw Open. 2020;3[3]:e203976).
In Colorado, “providers are depleted,” Dr. Berkowitz said. “We are hearing about sleep disturbances and even some traumatic nightmares from ICU staff. During our support sessions, tears come most frequently when they talk about the struggle to care for their families and how they’re putting them at risk.”
Also, he said, “one of the most upsetting issues has been around language and cultural issues. Because of the language barriers, providers cannot explain why families can’t be with their sick members, which has led to acrimony.”