Letter to the Editor
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Psychiatry. Jul 19, 2022; 12(7): 995-998
Published online Jul 19, 2022. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v12.i7.995
COVID-19 survivors: Multi-disciplinary efforts in psychiatry and medical humanities for long-term realignment
Henriette Löffler-Stastka, Monika Pietrzak-Franger
Henriette Löffler-Stastka, Department of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, Medical University Vienna, Vienna 1090, Austria
Monika Pietrzak-Franger, Department of English and American Studies, University Vienna, Vienna 1090, Austria
Author contributions: Löffler-Stastka H conceived the idea; Löffler-Stastka H and Pietrzak-Franger M interactively discussed the content, performed research on this topic previously, and wrote and revised the letter.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors report no relevant conflict of interest for this article.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Henriette Löffler-Stastka, MD, Dean, Director, Professor, Department of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, Medical University Vienna, Waehringer Guertel 18-20, Vienna 1090, Austria. henriette.loeffler-stastka@meduniwien.ac.at
Received: November 12, 2021
Peer-review started: November 12, 2021
First decision: December 27, 2021
Revised: January 14, 2022
Accepted: June 18, 2022
Article in press: June 18, 2022
Published online: July 19, 2022
Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic represents an enduring transformation in health care and education with the advancement of smart universities, telehealth, adaptive research protocols, personalized medicine, and self-controlled or artificial intelligence-controlled learning. These changes, of course, also cover mental health and long-term realignment of coronavirus disease 2019 survivors. Fatigue or anxiety, as the most prominent psychiatric “long coronavirus disease 2019” symptoms, need a theory-based and empirically-sound procedure that would help us grasp the complexity of the condition in research and treatment. Considering the systemic character of the condition, such strategies have to take the whole individual and their sociocultural context into consideration. Still, at the moment, attempts to build an integrative framework for providing meaning and understanding for the patients of how to cope with anxiety when they are confronted with empirically reduced parameters (e.g., severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus type 2) or biomarkers (e.g., the FK506 binding protein 5) are rare. In this context, multidisciplinary efforts are necessary. We therefore join in a plea for an establishment of ‘translational medical humanities’ that would allow a more straightforward intervention of humanities (e.g., the importance of the therapist variable, continuity, the social environment, etc) into the disciplinary, medial, political, and popular cultural debates around health, health-care provision, research (e.g., computer scientists for simulation studies), and wellbeing.

Keywords: Long COVID, Resilience, Multi-disciplinarity, Medical Humanities, Psychiatric sequelae

Core Tip: Recovery from coronavirus disease 2019 demands that multidisciplinary efforts be brought together to inquire, assess, and learn from various strategies of resilience we have witnessed in this context. Extant studies into individual, communal, and social-environmental aspects of (multisystemic) resilience can thus be expanded and validated; in effect, novel interventions may ensue.