ObjectivesProtecting healthcare workers from psychological harm is an urgent clinical issue within the current COVID-19 pandemic. Research on early psychological programmes that aim to prevent or reduce mental health symptoms and that have been tested in frontline responders may assist service providers with choosing a suitable intervention for rapid dissemination in healthcare settings.Design and outcome measuresFirst, Embase, Web of Science, PsycINFO and Google Scholar were searched through a systematic literature review of early psychological interventions administered to frontline responders in the last 15 years. Interventions were included if they were designed to prevent or reduce psychological impact and had outcome measures of psychological distress (eg, general psychopathology, post-traumatic stress disorder and stress) and/or positive mental health domains (eg, resilience, self-efficacy and life satisfaction). Second, the suitability of these programmes for the healthcare workforce was evaluated according to the criteria of effectiveness, content applicability and feasibility.ResultsOf 320 articles retrieved, 12 relevant studies were included that described six early psychological interventions. Although the evidence base is limited, psychological first aid, eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing, and trauma risk management showed effectiveness across at least two studies each with frontline workers. Resilience and coping for the healthcare community; anticipate, plan, and deter; and resilience at work programmes found promising results in single studies. Concerning other suitability criteria, all programmes appear applicable to healthcare settings and have acceptable feasibility for rapid implementation.ConclusionsDespite the limited evidence, several interventions were identified as potentially suitable and useful for improving psychological functioning of healthcare workers across a variety of disaster situations. Service providers should continue to implement and evaluate early psychological interventions in frontline workers in order to refine best practices for managing the psychological impact of future disasters.
Facial impressions of trustworthiness guide social decisions in the general population, as shown by financial lending in economic Trust Games. As an exception, autistic boys fail to use facial impressions to guide trust decisions, despite forming typical facial trustworthiness impressions (Autism, 19, 2015a, 1002). Here, we tested whether this dissociation between forming and using facial impressions of trustworthiness extends to neurotypical men with high levels of autistic traits. Forty‐six Caucasian men completed a multi‐turn Trust Game, a facial trustworthiness impressions task, the Autism‐Spectrum Quotient, and two Theory of Mind tasks. As hypothesized, participants’ levels of autistic traits had no observed effect on the impressions formed, but negatively predicted the use of those impressions in trust decisions. Thus, the dissociation between forming and using facial impressions of trustworthiness extends to the broader autism phenotype. More broadly, our results identify autistic traits as an important source of individual variation in the use of facial impressions to guide behaviour. Interestingly, failure to use these impressions could potentially represent rational behaviour, given their limited validity.
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