Emergent mental health training for responders during COVID-19 pandemic - An experience from Mexico

Introduction. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused mental health problems in both members of the general population and healthcare providers worldwide. In Mexico, these issues needed to be adequately understood and addressed from their onset. Objective. In this paper, we describe the first Mexican inter-institutional effort focused on training healthcare providers on mental health response during the COVID-19 pandemic. Method. The authors developed an online workshop on the basic fields of mental health for healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. All conferences and content were video-recorded and have been available as a stream since April 10, 2020. Enrollment data were described and broken down by professional profile. Descriptive patterns of enrollments were graphed as frequency curves and linear trends. The slope (m) of each professional’s enrollment line was used to compare application trends. Results. As of October 5, 2020, there were n=243,104 enrollments. Nurses were the professionals who applied the most (46.54%), with the highest slope of linear trend (m=612.99), whereas frequencies and slopes of physicians (23.25%, m=305.52), first responders (16.05%, m=220.64), psychologists (4.86%, m=55.99), and social workers (2.64%, m=35.00) were lower. Conclusion. Nurses showed the highest interest in this mental health training course, reflecting their commitment and need for professional education in emergent mental health fields, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. More strategies are needed to encourage psychologists and social workers to participate in emergency responses. However, educational programs should ideally be designed and implemented before emergencies occur, rather than as emergent academic activities during response phases. Keywords COVID-19, mental health training, healthcare workers, nurses, pandemic response, Mexico.