A Daily Coping Toolkit for Medical Personnel and First-Responders During COVID-19 Pandemic

Summary

During the current COVID-19 Pandemic, all communities are relying heavily on medical personnel and first-responders to maintain high levels of psychological and occupational functioning. However, during times of persistent high levels of stress, many individuals experience depletion in psychological resources, suffering intense distress that can make daily occupational and interpersonal functioning difficult. In order to assist with this immense challenge, this research team has developed a brief daily intervention based on decades of stress and trauma research that may help to support psychological health in individuals on the frontlines who are most essential to society. Considerable evidence supports the role of attention to and conceptualization of emotional experience in psychological resilience. This project tests a highly innovative combination of interventions targeting these processes in a brief, daily activity. The primary project aim is to investigate the Daily Coping Toolkit for medical personnel and first responders to determine efficacy over time, to test relative dosing, and to explicate the underlying therapeutic processes. The toolkit consists of 3 activities, administered one time each day, taking minutes to complete and will be administered to n=1000 personnel. Data analysis will test the impact of the toolkit on momentary affective processes and on symptoms and wellbeing over 9 months. The impact of this research will be evidence to support the further use of this novel tool to assist essential front-line personnel during this ongoing crisis helping to mitigate the psychological toll and also support occupational functioning now and in the future.

Conditions

• Psychological Stress

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Daily Coping Toolkit

1. Emotion Labelling Activity: Participants rate 10 discrete negative and positive emotional words on a likert scale (0-4). 2. Expressive Writing and Self Distancing Activity: Participants respond to an open-ended prompt to write about their day in an open text box in response to the prompt: "What was today like for you?" After this is completed, they are prompted that if the experience was very challenging, to revisit that experience in their mind by taking a "fly on the wall" perspective (Kross \& Ayduk, 2016). 3. Positive Emotion Generation Activity (1 v. 2 prompts) Participants are prompted to take a deep breath and then respond to 1 (or 2) of 8 possible prompts in which they can generate positive emotions. In response to each, they are asked to describe their thoughts or memories in open-ended text box.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Kent State University

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Doug Delahanty, PhD · Kent State University

• John Gunstad, PhD · Kent State University

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

SUPPORTIVE_CARE

Masking

DOUBLE

Model

SINGLE_GROUP

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2020-05-01

Primary Completion

2021-04-30

Completion

2021-04-30

Countries

• United States

Study Locations