Effect of a Brief Psychological Intervention on Anxiety and Depression During COVID-19

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The global impact of COVID-19 has been profound, and the public health threat it represents is the most serious seen in recent pandemic history. Thus, concerns about COVID-19 are pervasive and have several serious adverse impacts on the mental health of health workers and the general community. There is an urgent demand for programs that can address the stress experienced by people during the COVID-19 pandemic. This situation does not require therapy because these personnel do not necessarily suffer from a mental disorder. Instead, there are huge numbers of people who are facing unprecedented levels of stress and require strategies to manage this stress. One of the key groups of people who are highly distressed during the pandemic are university students because of the financial, academic, and social pressures on them. The UNSW team has developed suitable and evidence-based program that helps to cope with stress during the pandemic. As a low-intensity intervention for adults affected by the pandemic, this program teaches people well-documented strategies to manage stress. This project aims to conduct a rapid trial of a brief psychological intervention, termed Coping with COVID to reduce distress in Indian university student associated with concerns about COVID-19. There is an urgent need for publicly available strategies to reduce COVID-19 related distress. This project does not aim to treat a mental disorder but rather alleviate distress and improve coping in people with distress about COVID-19. This brief program will be offered via teleconferencing to allow for social distancing on a group basis. We hypothesise that Coping with COVID will result in greater reductions in anxiety and depression elative to supportive counselling. Adults who screen positive for psychological distress will be randomized to Coping with COVID or supportive counseling via teleconferencing to groups of 4 people at a time. The control arm will provide 6 peer-led supportive counseling sessions delivering in groups of 4 people via video-conferencing. All participants will be assessed at baseline, post-intervention, and 2 and 6 months follow-up