Ultra Brief Psychological Interventions for COVID-19 Pandemic: Introduction of a Locally-Adapted Brief Intervention for Mental Health and Psychosocial Support Service

Abstract

The ultra-brief psychological interventions (UBPI) was created in 2018 to empower healthcare providers with psychological skills that can be delivered within a short period. Techniques used within UBPI were adopted from a variety of well established psychotherapies and distilled into its core essentials. This enabled practitioners of UBPI to deliver specific psychological skills in the appropriate context to the client within a period of 15–20 min. UBPI was also manualised to standardised training of practitioners. During the novel coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, UBPI was modified to suit the unique psychological demands of the pandemic. This article presents how UBPI was adapted and used with healthcare providers dealing with COVID-19 and also with the public who required psychological first aid (PFA).

Mental health services for infectious disease outbreaks including COVID-19: a rapid systematic review

“…ventilators) will help relieve the stress of having to treat people with infections, and improve their mental wellbeing. During this COVID-19 crisis, various interventions were offered to healthcare workers, such as a peer-supported resilience intervention in the USA (Albott et al, 2020), e-package with Agile methodology in the UK (Blake, Bermingham, Johnson, & Tabner, 2020), and the ultra-brief psychological intervention in Malaysia (Ping et al, 2020). The e-package in the UK included evidence-based guidance, support, and signposting relating to psychological wellbeing, and results of this pre-post intervention ( n = 55) revealed that 82% of healthcare participants used the information in their work or home lives (Blake et al, 2020).…”

“…The e-package in the UK included evidence-based guidance, support, and signposting relating to psychological wellbeing, and results of this pre-post intervention ( n = 55) revealed that 82% of healthcare participants used the information in their work or home lives (Blake et al, 2020). Feedback from healthcare workers suggests that qualitative wellness is improved by providing a free online resource manual targeting psychological skills and interventions to reduce the distress caused by uncertainty during the pandemic (Ping et al, 2020). Many countries have developed dedicated teams to provide mental health support for healthcare workers; however, the type of support needed depends on the stage of the pandemic, and can benefit from peer and professional counseling (Isaksson Rø, Veggeland, & Aasland, 2016).…”

“…MHPSS programs through international organizations were used effectively in several low- and middle-income countries during infectious disease outbreaks (Cenat et al, 2020). For example, group-based CBT (Waterman et al, 2018; Waterman et al, 2019), PFA, PTL (Decosimo et al, 2019), culturally adapted interventions such as SMART (Ng et al, 2006), ultra-brief psychological interventions (Ping et al, 2020) and peer supports (Rastegar Kazerooni et al, 2020) have been reported to effectively mitigate the emotional impacts of COVID-19, EVD, and SARS outbreaks. However, the quality of evidence was still restricted because limited studies have provided quantitative data, and most intervention studies included small numbers of participants.…”

Fear of COVID-19 and COVID-19 Stress and Association with Sociodemographic and Psychological Process Factors in Cases under Surveillance in a Frontline Worker Population in Borneo

“…However, for depression, anxiety, and stress, both psychological factors contribute significantly to the total variance in all three scores, whereas psychological mindedness does not have a similar contribution. This suggests that it is crucial that we perform interventions that are able to increase mindfulness and psychological flexibility, especially in frontline workers, be it in healthcare or nonhealthcare settings [65]. One of the interventions that can be considered is the ultra-brief psychological intervention (UBPI).…”

Retrospective Analysis of Psychological Factors in COVID-19 Outbreak Among Isolated and Quarantined Agricultural Students in a Borneo University

“…Hence, it is crucial that early preventative measures at the university level be undertaken to increase surveillance at the alert phase (26,27), especially taking into account the impact of digital learning on student burnout and mental health (28). Crucially, brief psychological interventions also need to be undertaken to reduce psychological morbidity, especially in rural areas (29,30). Digital interventions can also be employed to expedite monitoring of quarantine and streamline surveillance to reduce unnecessary healthcare worker man-hours (31).…”