Emma Wilkinson, writing in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), talks to healthcare workers who are trying to ensure that vulnerable psychiatric patients do not get sidelined by covid-19 and finds that some changes may become permanent.

As the NHS rapidly ramped up critical care capacity to deal with the surge of severely ill covid-19 patients, other specialties quickly had to rethink how to manage routine care while
avoiding face-to-face contact with patients when possible. For mental health services this has meant a host of changes, the biggest being the rapid adoption of video and phone
consultations – an approach that had rarely been used in a field where relationships and trust between clinicians and patients are vital, and where body language and eye contact are a key part of assessment.

You can read the rest of the article @ https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/369/bmj.m2106.full.pdf.

Reference

Wilkinson, E. (2020) How Mental Health Services are Adapting to Provide Care in the Pandemic. BMJ 2020;369:m2106.