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

• Main Authors: Nicholas Pang Tze Ping, Wendy Diana Shoesmith, Sandi James, Noor Melissa Nor Hadi, Eugene Koh Boon Yau, Loo Jiann Lin
• Format: Article
• Language: English; English
• Published: 2020
• Subjects: R Medicine (General)
• Online Access: https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/26190/1/Ultra%20Brief%20Psychological%20Interventions%20for%20COVID-19%20Pandemic.pdf; https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/26190/2/Ultra%20Brief%20Psychological%20Interventions%20for%20COVID-19%20Pandemic1.pdf; https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/26190/; 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).