The Medical Student Response to the Mental Health Consequences of COVID-19
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LETTER TO THE EDITOR
The Medical Student Response to the Mental Health Consequences of COVID-19 Anthony N. Almazan 1
&
Andrew S. Chun 1 & India Perez-Urbano 2
Received: 13 May 2020 / Revised: 11 August 2020 / Accepted: 8 September 2020 # Academic Psychiatry 2020
To the Editor: As the worldwide number of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases continues to rise, the medical community has identified another imminent crisis—the mental health consequences of the pandemic. An estimated 45% of American adults feel that COVID-19 has had a negative impact on their mental health [1]. As physical distancing measures remain in place, medical providers continue to anticipate surges in isolation-related mental health conditions, including depression, anxiety, and suicide. Shelter-in-place orders may lead to increasing rates of substance use relapse, overdose, domestic violence, and child abuse [2]. Furthermore, the trauma of caring for individuals with COVID-19, felt by both frontline health care providers and the general public, will likely have lasting consequences. The threat of an enduring mental health crisis has led physicians to call for early preventive efforts [2]. However, the increased burden of mental illness resulting from this pandemic will likely place additional strain on an already overextended mental health care system. The medical community must leverage all of its available assets to combat this threat. We believe that medical students represent a significant untapped resource that should be mobilized to address this impending mental health crisis. At the time of the writing of this manuscript, the Association of American Medical Colleges stated, “Unless there is a critical health care workforce need locally, we strongly suggest that medical students not be involved in any direct patient care activities” [3]. At the height of the pandemic, medical schools across the country subsequently shifted to virtual learning and barred students from in-person
* Anthony N. Almazan [email protected] 1
Harvard Medical School, 25 Shattuck Street, Boston, MA 02115, USA
2
University of California-San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
clinical work. In response, students developed new roles to serve their communities. They made headlines collecting personal protective equipment for hospitals, providing child care for essential workers, and ensuring food security for high-risk community members [4]. Medical students also advocated for their incorporation into telemedicine efforts in order to relieve overburdened medical providers [5]. Missing from this discourse was a discussion of the ways medical students could be voluntarily mobilized to address the mental health challenges resulting from this pandemic. The resistance to medical student involvement in the COVID-19 response is based on reasonable safety concerns, but a carefully designed medical student mental health response could avert these risks. Recently proposed interventions to address the mental health consequences of COVID19 were designed f
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