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Although healthcare professionals have become the symbol of risk and sacrifice during the COVID-19 pandemic, spiritual care practitioners (SCP) have also put themselves at great risk while offering their service in hospitals, hospices and other healthcare facilities. This study was designed to explore the lived experiences of SCP during the current health crisis in Poland. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twenty-four SCP. Nine major themes emerged from the interviews: personal reactions to the pandemic, SCP’s perception of the pandemic, the impact of COVID-19 on the provision of spiritual care, spiritual needs during the pandemic, work-related emotions, the impact of the COVID-19 on religion, the role of spiritual care during the outbreak, the healthcare professionals’ perceptions of SCP and barriers to the provision of spiritual care during the pandemic. The SCP indicated that although the COVID-19 crisis has affected the availability of pastoral, religious and spiritual care, it has amplified the importance of such care and has positively influenced the visibility of SCP in modern healthcare practice. Nonetheless, in such desperate times, SCP are still neglected and should be further recognised and integrated into the healthcare system.

Student run free clinics (SRFCs) fill a void in healthcare access for many communities and have been subject to unprecedented shifts in care delivery brought about by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Our single-center institution serving uninsured patients in central Missouri switched from in-person visits to strictly telehealth visits with the onset of the pandemic. This study investigated the impact of the pandemic and the switch to telehealth on the clinic return rates by ethnicity, race, gender, rurality, and age. The pandemic led to a 47.4% reduction in the number of monthly patient encounters. Of the established SRFC population (N = 309), only 87 patients (28.2%) returned for a telehealth visit during the COVID-19 pandemic. Older patients (≥ 45 years old) were more likely to return (OR 1.71, 95% CI 1.02–2.85) for care via telehealth after the onset of the pandemic than younger patients (

We sought to evaluate the religious coping styles of adolescents during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and its restrictions. The study was conducted online during the 2020 academic year among students in three randomly selected high schools in a city center located in Eastern Turkey. The students studying in the chosen high schools who agreed to participate were included in the study (n = 514). We found that most adolescents were anxious, had been affected in terms of health and life satisfaction, and felt sad due to isolation. Almost all subjects attached importance to their religious beliefs. The adolescents' mean Religious Coping Scale score was 2.23 ± 0.50, their mean Positive Religious Coping subscale score was 2.91 ± 0.73, and their mean Negative Religious Coping subscale score was 1.54 ± 0.52. Specifically, male adolescents of ages 15-17 whose incomes were less than their expenditures and who lived in a broken family had the highest level of negative religious coping. In light of these findings, adolescents can be supported by teaching them to develop positive religious coping styles during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study was designed to determine the relation between religion and the motivations of future healthcare professionals to volunteer during the COVID-19 outbreak in Poland. Data were collected from 417 healthcare students via an online questionnaire. The results indicated that although students’ religiosity was not a significant predictor of volunteering during the pandemic, it played a key role in determining their motivations to join the fight against COVID-19. There was a significant positive relationship between students’ religiosity and their eagerness to commit for the sake of the community rather than for personal or egoistic motives.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced a new reality on the delivery of psychotherapeutic services. Therapists have had to rapidly adapt to telehealth therapy using various video conferencing technologies while working from spaces that were not necessarily designed for delivering therapy sessions. While COVID-19 continues to be present in therapists' lives and shapes how they provide services, answering the question of whether to meet with clients in person again is a decision laden with complexity and ambivalence. In this mixed-method study, surveys with 169 therapists and interviews with 17 therapists were used to determine the factors that currently influence their attitudes toward resuming traditional in-person psychotherapy in light of COVID-19. We focused on the therapists' personal and professional characteristics to assess their plans to continue with telepsychotherapy or return to a traditional psychotherapy setting. Our findings suggest that positive attitudes toward telepsychotherapy, the lack of an effective vaccine, clients' satisfaction with telepsychotherapy, insurance reimbursement for telepsychotherapy, and negative attitudes toward wearing masks during sessions influenced therapists' decisions on whether or not to return to traditional in-person psychotherapy in the age of COVID-19.

The present study was designed to assess mental health provider attitudes and perceptions of telemental health (TMH) prior to and during the COVID-19 Pandemic, as well as the nature of their TMH utilization. The study aimed to gather information about positive and negative attitudes towards TMH, perceptions and correlates based on the modality of care, and beliefs about the overall effectiveness of TMH as compared to face-to-face care. The current study is part of a larger mixed methods project utilizing a repeated cross-sectional design. An online survey was administered to a sample of 1448 mental health providers and included demographic and professional information, experiences with and perceptions of TMH prior to and during the COVID-19 Pandemic, as well as a brief measure of pandemic-related stress. The COVID-19 Pandemic resulted in an increased use of TMH in the study sample. During COVID-19, providers reported increased agreement with TMH being necessary, important, and effective for care delivery. Providers who primarily used video, compared with telephone, reported that TMH was more useful, satisfying, and effective. While negative attitude towards TMH was predicted only by prior attitudes and belief in TMH effectiveness, positive attitude towards TMH was also predicted by female sex and current level of pandemic related stress. TMH use during the pandemic was predicted by primary use of video platform and previous TMH use. The 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic resulted in increased use of TMH and significantly increased positive perceptions about TMH among mental health providers. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11126-021-09899-7.

The purpose of this study is to measure posttraumatic stress, grief, burnout, and secondary trauma experienced by employed social workers in the United States and to describe organizational support provided to social workers during the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. This study used data from the first wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Emotional Well-Being Study, a prospective panel study examining the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and includes a sample of 181 social workers. We conducted univariate analyses. Over a quarter (26.21%) of social workers met the diagnostic criteria for PTSD and 16.22% reported severe grief symptoms. While 99.19% of the sample reported average to high compassion satisfaction, 63.71% reported average burnout and 49.59% reported average secondary trauma. Findings indicate that social workers are reporting higher than national estimates of PTSD, indicating a greater need for more emotional support during the COVID-19 pandemic. Given the significance and severity of the pandemic, it is essential that organizations provide resources for both immediate and ongoing support for the emotional well-being of their employees.

As a public health emergency, a pandemic increases susceptibility to unfavourable psychological outcomes. The aim of the present study was to investigate the buffering role of personal resilience in two aspects of psychological functioning, mental health and stress, among Slovene adults at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak. Within five days after Slovenia declared epidemics, 2722 participants (75% female) completed an on-line survey measuring mental health and perceived stress as outcome variables and demographics, health-related variables, and personal resilience as predictor variables. Hierarchical logistic regression analyses demonstrated that women, younger, and less educated participants had higher odds for less favourable psychological functioning during the COVID-19 outbreak. In addition, poorer health indicators and COVID-19 infection concerns predicted diminished psychological functioning. The crucial factor promoting good psychological functioning during the COVID-19 pandemics was resilience, additionally buffering against detrimental effects of demographic and health-related variables on mental health and perceived stress. While previous research suggests that mental health problems increase during pandemics, one way to prevent these problems and bolster psychological functioning is to build individuals' resilience. The interventions should be targeted particularly at younger adults, women, less educated people, and individuals who subjectively perceive their health to be rather poor.