CHONGQING, Feb. 23 (Xinhua) -- In the nationwide battle against the novel coronavirus, mental health volunteers have been playing an important role in helping people overcome fears of illness.
Despite thousands of psychological experts who are providing professional mental care for both infected patients and medical staff on the frontline in the epidemic-stricken Hubei Province, more volunteers are working tirelessly on helping more residents affected by the new virus across the country.
"Most people feel anxious and depressed when they have stayed home for a long while to avoid contracting during the epidemic. While other factors, including sensitive personality and unfortunate life experiences, may lead to extreme behaviors. Therefore, providing mental care services is as significant as epidemic prevention and control efforts," said Yu Jie, a professional psychologist.
Yu has been offering consultation for a residential community in Tushan Town, Nanan District, in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, since the start of the outbreak. Nearly 700 residents in the community have been isolated as an anti-epidemic effort after three confirmed cases were reported there on Feb. 13.
To gain residents' trust, Yu joined in the group chat of the community, and assessed their psychological states through her observation and worked out a plan.
She posted short cooking videos of various nutritious food and encouraged gym-goers in the group chat to share simple at-home workouts with others. Such interactions shorten the distance between the isolated residents and the psychologist, who later gave one-on-one psychological counseling to those who suffered from high psychological pressure.
"Listening and companionship are some basic methods that can help residents purge their emotions or relieve emotional tensions. And then, we use other psychotherapies such as conversation and meditation to make them relax," Yu said.
A work team would comb the common problems from different individual cases and shared with the community, to relieve their psychological pressure for as many people as possible.
Compared with Yu, Shen Yuan, another psychologist, has a tougher task. Shen has to face over 40 close contacts of infected patients and suspected patients at an isolation spot in Chongqing, and provide counseling psychology for them.
"They bear much more pressure. Some even show depression and anxiety. Psychological counseling is very effective in calming them down at this time," Shen said.
Both Yu and Shen are volunteers invited by the local governments providing psychological care services for isolated persons, medical staff, grassroots officials and ordinary people during the outbreak. There are more than 2,170 such volunteers in Chongqing, neighboring the hardest-hit Hubei Province.
"It is progress in social governance as governments at all levels have paid more attention to psychological assistance in recent years," Yu said.
Apart from volunteers, hospitals in Chongqing also opened psychological counseling hotlines and online services.
So far, the municipality has offered psychological counseling for about 57,000 people, and issued over 230 articles on the mental health of epidemic prevention and control on the Internet, receiving more than 1.5 million views.
