Ultra brief psychological interventions for covid-19 pandemic: Introduction of a locally-adapted brief intervention for mental health and psychosocial support service

• Main Authors: Pang, Nicholas Tze Ping, Wendy Diana Shoesmith, Sandi James, Noor Melissa Nor Hadi, Koh, Eugene Boon Yau, Loo, Jiann Lin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2020
• Subjects: RA Public aspects of medicine
• Online Access: https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/25736/1/Ultra%20brief%20psychological%20interventions%20for%20covid-19%20pandemic.pdf; https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/25736/; https://doi.org/10.21315/mjms2020.27.2.6

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).