The health of doctors during the most acute periods of the COVID 19 pandemic was seriously threatened, but their state of mind was no less at risk. Statistics describe that in more than half of the cases, doctors who regularly struggled with COVID experienced symptoms of depression, even more frequent than stress (Rahman et al., 2021). Anxiety is also a natural response to high levels of stress and risk, and is seen in more than a third of physicians. It is proposed to improve the codes for physicians in such a way as to reduce the risks of excessively severe mental injuries or to find ways for their immediate treatment.
First of all, it seems necessary to create conditions for the Physicians in which they can immediately receive support for mental health. It is obvious that the situation of constant tension in which the doctors were during the period of COVID-19 is extreme and actually a crisis. Doctors cannot work from home and are forced to be afraid of infection, but, at the same time, others already automatically stigmatize them as also being the infected. These conflicts are all the more acute in less developed countries, where resources may not be enough to treat or even accommodate patients in a hospital. Physicians in this context turn out to be an extremely vulnerable group of the population, which may even need the help of a psychotherapist.
Secondly, it seems necessary to exclude younger and psychologically vulnerable individuals from working with COVID patients. Most students forced to work with critically ill patients during a pandemic develop depression that can be traumatic throughout their medical career. It should be taken into account that after the age of 27, doctors are statistically more stable psychologically (Rahman et al., 2021). That is why, in addition to prescribing mandatory consultations with a psychotherapist, it would make sense to propose a ban on the work of young people with COVID patients, choosing a special, less susceptible threshold age, for example, from 28 to 35.
Reference
Rahman, A., Deeba, F., Akhter, S., Bashar, F., Nomani D., Koot, J., Koly, K. N., Bin Salah, F., Haverlag, K., & Anwar, I. (2021). Mental health condition of physicians working frontline with COVID-19 patients in Bangladesh. BMC Psychiatry 21, 615.