Worldwide Mental Health Approaches for Medical Staff during the Epidemic of COVID-19; a Systematic Review

This paper aimed to review the solutions presented in various articles to protect mental health in medical staff during the COVID-19 epidemic in the world.

In this systematic review, the Cochrane Library, Web of Science, Scopus, Embase, and PubMed databases were searched until 1 October 2020. All full-text published articles (also descriptive and observational articles but not abstracts, commentaries, and letters to the editors) that describe strategies to deal with the psychological problems of the medical staff were included without language restriction.

14 papers (8 observational and six descriptive papers) were entered for qualitative analysis. Analysis of these studies identified a) attention to physiological needs of staff; b) staying in touch with family and friends; c) peer support; d) team support; e) emotional support; and f) leadership or organizational support to provide psychological support to medical staff.

To fight in the first line of epidemic prevention and control, medical staff needs a physical and mental safeguard. So, proper interventions in the prevention and treatment of psychological problems of the medical staff seem to be essential.