key: cord-0881697-sbgg4jyl authors: Ullah, Irfan; Shabbir, Dania; Ramalho, Rodrigo; Irfan, Muhammad; Filippis, Renato de title: COVID-19 & psychiatric care: need of a plan to prevent follow-up discontinuation date: 2021-03-11 journal: Encephale DOI: 10.1016/j.encep.2021.01.002 sha: 3cdf53ddf07c612f27828cad28aeb37a5aee6023 doc_id: 881697 cord_uid: sbgg4jyl nan 1. Irfan Ullah: irfanullahecp2@gmail.com; ORCID ID: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1100-101X 2. Dania Shabbir: daniashabbir@yahoo.com 3. Rodrigo Ramalho: r.ramalho@auckland.ac.nz; ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2372-6854 4. Muhammad Irfan: irfanjamal2k18@gmail.com 5. Renato de Filippis: defilippisrenato@gmail.com; ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6928-1224 All authors declare no conflicts of interest. The Coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) was declared an international public health emergency by the World Health Organization on 11 th March 2020. In recognition of the worldwide threat, numerous countries imposed a lockdown to restrict the spread of the virus. The main priority of health authorities largely consisted of avoiding, controlling, and reducing the transmission of COVID-19. This included modifying the healthcare system through the closure or partial closure of inpatient facilities, with outpatient care often restricted to emergency cases only. This situation resulted in some potential disregard on the mental-well-being of the population, at least during the initial phases of the outbreak. Along with the mental health needs of the general population, the ones of people with psychiatric diagnosis were also somewhat underestimated. In many parts of the world, psychiatric wards were converted to cater the non-psychiatric COVID patients. Those units who remained caring for people with a psychiatric diagnosis promoted physical distancing by using isolation rooms, lowering the overall number of available beds, imposing larger intake restrictions and minimizing the length of stay. At the same time, impedance in the travel facilities, largely due to the unavailability of public transit, coupled with the people unwillingness to visit hospitals due to the fear of getting infected by the virus, were accompanied by a decrease of the follow-up patients [1] . In addition, relatives of the hospitalized psychiatric patients also faced difficulties in visiting them due to the lockdown. There is now a global call to acknowledge and care for the population' mental health wellbeing, and to take all necessary measures to mitigate the adverse impact of the pandemic. Sustainable modifications for mental health care delivery systems should be created by researchers, practitioners, and service users, and explicitly designed to reduce inequalities in the health care delivery. Psychiatric care units, including nurses, physicians, care managers, psychiatrists and social workers, need to be set up to provide mental well-being support to the affected individuals. Governments and health organizations should ensure that safe and interactive knowledge-sharing platforms are used to include and facilitate therapeutic therapy in telepsychiatry, facilitate legal information and reduce isolation cases [2] . Telepsychiatry has become vital in the ongoing pandemic and many forms of online mental health programs have been introduced to alleviate psychological distress [3] . These include online surveys to allow health authorities to allocate health resources and establish adequate therapies and online mental health education. In Australia, telephone-based screening questionnaires were conducted, and appointments were updated based upon the conditions of emergency, health and risk, and emergency plans were placed in advanced [4] . Telepsychiatry has proven to be highly effective and clinically endorsed in managing the follow-up of the patients, with 80% clinically stable patients being successfully managed solely through it [5] . To conclude, health policymakers should devise a mechanism to cater the needs of both COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 patients such that no patient should hesitate in reaching out to the concerned source of relief due to the fear of being infected by the virus. COVID-19 pandemic: impact of lockdown and hospital classification on neurological patients Telepsychiatry and healthcare access inequities during the COVID-19 pandemic The urge to implement and expand telepsychiatry during the COVID-19 crisis: Early career psychiatrists' perspective Remote consultations in the era of COVID-19 Preliminary experience in a regional Australian public acute mental health care setting Response to: Rethinking online mental health services in China during the COVID-19 epidemic None. All authors reviewed the manuscript. All the authors agreed on the final draft before submission. No funding was provided for this work.