Members, students and affiliates across the u. S. And around the world. What psychologists do, psychologists are trained at the doctorate level. Train in a field clinical, as i did, in which you not only study and do original research, but you do additional clinical training. You do a whole range of things from organizational psychology there are many psychologists in the business world, many who work at laboratories doing cognitive work or developmental work. Psychologists do a whole range of things. Because of that, we talk about any aspect of Human Behavior. There is practically no area of Human Behavior that psychologists are not doing work from. Environmental work to cognitive work to help people learn and study. We try to bring all of that to bear when we are working with people. For those of us who were clinically or working applied settings. Host for our viewers, what is the difference between a psychologist and a psychiatrist or is there a difference . Guest there is a difference. A psychologist will go to graduate school and study an area for many years, usually four or five years. A psychiatrist goes to medical school. They train as physicians and then do a specialty in psychiatry. Two very different types of training. There is overlap. We look at the same literature often for those of us who are clinicians. Very different orientations and training. Host what are the greatest psychological challenges facing americans in this situation now with coronavirus . Guest this is a unique situation. In my career, i have been responsible for Mental Health disaster responses after 9 11 and various disasters since then. This is a very unique set of circumstances. We have a situation that is affecting the entire population. It is going to be prolonged. There is a lot of uncertainty involved. There is a number of factors involved here that we know from a lot of research will have an impact on peoples Mental Health. It is really important for us to understand that but also to understand the ways we can mitigate the negative impacts and ensure as we come out of this on the others that the population is as healthy as it can be. Seeing a lot of families at home now with their children out of school. We are seeing a lot of people stuck in the same spaces. What are some of the stresses we are seeing being put on americans from our coronavirus related activities from the social distancing, from being stuck inside . What are some of the stresses being put on americans . Guest this is one of the challenges. There are many stresses. This is something that is affecting almost every aspect of our lives. It is not only being in close quarters with your family over a very extended period of time, but disruptions in peoples work, students are not able to go to school, many people are being affected financially. I think we have to look at the totality of all of the stresses people are experiencing and think about how we deal with that. The reality is the level of uncertainty is certainly something that affects people. The close quarters, as you mentioned, is something over a the socialime distancing is probably the aspect of this i am the most concerned about. We have a lot of research that shows how important social connectedness is. On one hand, we have a body of research on social support which shows that generally the more social support we have in our lives, the better we do physically, the better we do psychologically, the better we do in life, generally. That Research Goes back over decades, literally. There are literally hundreds of studies that show that. On the other hand, we have another body of research that shows social isolation can have a negative impact on us from a physical standpoint, a mental standpoint. Mortality is greater for people who are socially isolated. Together, what the Research Shows is social connectedness is important for health. Our physical health and or Mental Health. A big part of managing this crisis is social distancing, which means we have to figure out ways to overcome that so that we are ensuring we are having that connectedness that helps us stay healthy and well. That is the biggest challenge we have. Of uncertainty creates fear in the population. Abilityr can impact our to think through the problems we have to solve. We know the kinds of impacts people are having in terms of their employment can lead to depression and other kinds of Mental Health challenges. Collectively, all of these things are having an impact and it will be really important for us to understand that, to Pay Attention to that, and to be very intentional about developing strategies to overcome that. Host i see on your website you guys are suggesting the social distancing. You are not sitting people dont social distance you are not saying people dont social distance during this pandemic. What are some of the things you can suggest a people to keep themselves healthy while they are social distancing . Guest that is such a great question and that is the big challenge we have. I want to be very clear that social distancing should not lead to social isolation. Social isolation is very, very bad for our health. Bet we have to do is creative about keeping social connections. If this had happened 20 or 30 years ago, we would be in a different position. We have technology now, iphones, most of us have smartphones, most of us have internet connections, most of us are connected through social media. All of those are things they can help us overcome the fact that we have to be that we have to distance ourselves, socially. I encourage people to be very intentional about trying to keep connections. Exampleseen some great of how people are overcoming that by going virtually for meetings. My daughter is a dancer and she was talking about debby allen doing a dance lesson virtually. There were thousands of people from around the world and she was so excited because that was an opportunity she would not have had, otherwise. People are doing all kinds of things to stay connected and i would encourage people, regardless of what it is to keeps you connected, figure out how people are staying connected in that realm. Communities are another important aspect of keeping us healthy. Another area of support for people and people should reach out. I am trying to figure that out, calling up old friends. A lot of people have a lot of time now. Most of us have old friends that we would love to reconnect with. Give them a call. What i would suggest is when you give them a call, do a facetime call so you can see them physically. It helps with feelings of social connectedness. Host you guys have put up suggestions for how to cope under social limitation measures. Here are some things i thought you are suggesting. Consumption to reliable sources. One of the things that is happening in our world is we are a 24 hour news world. Do you think we should slow down on News Consumption . Guest we absolutely should. There is research that shows too much media has a negative effect on peoples Mental Health. Social media, especially. Too much social media has been shown to have a negative impact people have to modulate or moderate the amount of social media they are taking in. The more social media people taken, the more fearful they will be around this particular crisis. Limiting that, you dont want to do that with cspan, especially this morning, but otherwise, you have to think about how you limit your social media intake. Suggest creating and following a daily routine. Even if you are at home, how important is it to have a routine you go through every day . Guest the routine is important. There are a couple of things about that. It will help people feel much more grounded and normalize. There is one thing to keep in mind. Into socialof going isolation happened literally overnight. It has affected so many aspects of our lives. We will not be able to snap our fingers and have a new world in terms of how we have organized our lives. We need to give ourselves time to rebuild our lives given this new reality. We will be in this for quite a while. But, having said that, there are things we can start to do immediately to create routine in our lives. It is critical to do that for children, especially. They are now out of school and making sure they have a routine that helps them feel more grounded, it will be important, as well. Host we are talking with dr. Arthur evans, the ceo of the American Psychological association. We are going to open up our phone lines to you in case you have questions you want to ask dr. Evans about how to cope with our social distancing. We are going to open up regional lines. If you are in the eastern or central time zones, we want you to call in at 202 7488000. If you are in the mountain or pacific time zones, your number will be 202 7488001. If you are a medical professional, we want you to join this conversation, as well. Your number will be 202 7488002. You can always text us at 202 7488003. We are always reading on social media. On facebook. D we know a lot of family and friends are social distancing and quarantining themselves. What should we be on the lookout for to make sure our family and friends are being mentally healthy and safe while they are staying in their apartments and homes . What are some symptoms we need to look out for to make sure our family and friends are mentally safe . Guest there are a number of things. As i mentioned earlier, there are a few really unique things about this particular crisis. I would be looking out for anxiety, anger. Angryeople will be very because they are restricted. Their mobility has been restricted. Because be very angry they lost their job. I would look out for anger, excessive anger. I would lookout for anxiety, fear and concern. I would lookout for depression. Our people more depressed . Are they reporting they are depressed . Are they having trouble sleeping . Are they having trouble eating . Those are science people are experiencing psychological distress. Our first line of defense is to do the things we feel the can help mitigate. We will talk about those strategies. We get to a point where you need help, reach out for that. One thing that has been happening is the federal government and Insurance Companies and associations are working at how to ensure we can ,ove very quickly to telehelp the clinician talking directly throughe needing help technology, videoconferencing and so forth. There are barriers to that. Regulatory barriers that are being addressed. I think many of those have now been addressed and we have more of an ability to do that. I encourage people to reach out for professional help if they get to that point. Host i have been joking with a lot of people about having cabin fever, having been at home for a week with my children and family and not having interaction with other adults outside of my house. What do you tell people who are like me, who say i just need to get out of the house . I need that interaction. What are some things we can do . You have to listen to local officials in terms of leaving the house. Most places, people are still able to leave their house. That would be one thing. The other thing is to look for alternatives and create new alternatives. I mentioned a virtual dance class. People who are recovering, for example, can do virtual aa meetings. Something that is very important. There are communities that are doing their Worship Services virtually. Those things that are pleasurable to you, chances are there is someone who is figuring out how to do that virtually and connecting. We had a virtual happy hour and i had to say people were not drinking but it was the concept of connecting, just doing something to keep people connected. I will be doing a virtual town hall with my staff and allowing people to ask questions, those kind of things. Our work environment, our social environment, all of those areas of our lives are figuring out new ways to keep connected. I really encourage people to look for how that is happening in their community and their social network. Host lets let some of our callers viewers join in. Start with patricia, who is calling from new jersey. Patricia, good morning. Caller good morning and thank you for cspan. Dr. Evans, i wonder what you mean by saying this is a new reality. How would you describe a new reality . Unlike other disasters, earthquakes or hurricanes, those events happen, we know when they happen and why they happened. We can go into a Recovery Period immediately after. We know how those processes work, generally. Onre is a lot of research how people recover after those kind of disasters. This is different. No onef all, there is event we can look to to understand what is going on. Uncertaintyot of about when this situation will p eak. We dont know how long this will last. The fact we have to isolate across the country is very different, very unique. People are losing their jobs. There are so many factors involved that are creating a unique set of circumstances, something we have not had to deal with as a nation before. It will require us to be very creative and innovative to work through this. I think, just based on what we see happening, things are going to get even more difficult and challenging over the next several weeks, and potentially months. We have to be ready, psychologically, for that. That is the bad news. The good news is there are many things we can do to take our Mental Health take our Mental Health into our own hands and make sure we are healthy throughout this process and certainly on the back end as we come out of this. Host lets talk to james, who is calling from myrtle beach, south carolina. Good morning. Caller first of all, i would like to let all the previous this is notrstand the flu. House and seeyour you and hope you will get better and i can leave and not worry about catching anything. If i to your come to your house and you have this virus, i will have to be tested. You need to start taking this thing real serious. This is the start of the season and we are closed down. It is like a ghost town. We are going to be in some serious trouble. Businesses are going to lose a lot of money because of this thing and we are taking it serious. What do youans,hink why do you think sorry, i cant get the word out. Why do you think there are people who are out there who are still in denial about this being serious . We have people out there who say this is a hoax, it is not that bad, it is just the flu. What is going on with the denial we see out there about the data we are seeing . That the first thing is the way this has been described, i think we could do a better job of describing what is happening with this particular crisis and why it is different than the flu. I, frankly, dont think we have done a good job explaining that to the public. As i have listened to the Public Health officials who have been talking about this, it sounds like the real crisis is not because people are having flu symptoms, and even the mortality around it, it is the pressure that the number of people who get this virus, the pressure that that will put on our health care system, it is what we are seeing in italy. I dont think we have done a good job with talking about that. Forerday we did a webinar Public Officials and we talked about how Public Officials can communicate more effectively to people based on psychological science the science around communication. One of the presenters talked about how to effectively use numbers. If you look at how numbers have been used in this crisis, we focus on two things the number of people affected and the number of people who have died from this condition. That does not really reinforce the real impact this is having on hospitals and if we talk about those numbers what is the capacity of hospitals . Will we be able to take care of people who are currently we know people who have elective things, some people have serious conditions, they are not able to get access to care. Those are the numbers that are more important in this situation because those are the numbers the tell the public why this is so important. The first thing is, we have to tell a story and use all of the available information to reinforce the messages we want the public to have. The second thing is that, unfortunately, we know that people look at almost everything that is happening in our society through a political lens. On wherehat, depending you are politically, you will look at this particular situation differently. Until all of our political leaders are on the same page and talking about this in the same way, unfortunately, we will continue to have people having varying opinions about how important this is, is it real, and so forth. Tim, who istalk to calling from minnesota. You are a medical professional. What do you do . Caller i am a licensed practical nurse. Host what are you seeing out there . Caller we have one confirmed case in our county. Evans wanted to ask dr. I wanted to make a comment about howarticle humor helps in dark times. I found in my practice it is a universal language. I worked with a lot of confused clients years ago. We used humor a lot. We would get people laughing. I just wanted to hear what the doctor has to say about that. Thanks a lot for your information. Guest that is such a great comment. It absolutely is true. I think humor can be very important. One of the things we do when we work with people clinically is to help them identify i have worked with people and particularly people who have been depressed for a long time, when i give them an exercise of thinking about pleasurable things, or things you do that you get a lot of pleasure at, you can see this look, well, i had not thought about those kind of things for quite a while. One thing that can happen in this kind of crisis is we are so focused on trying to deal with the problems and challenges that we have that we lose sight of the things they give us pleasure in life. One of the important strategies is for us to think about, what are the things they give us pleasure . Whether it is humor, art, music, or whatever it is, and lets be intentional about trying to bring those things into our lives. It is something that helps us cope and you do better under stressful situations. Host we are talking about medical professionals, i am curious as to what your advice is for people in the medical profession . They are out there on the front lines. Inanyone is going to come contact with someone with coronavirus, it is them. How do they keep themselves mentally healthy as they are being asked to do more and more . Respect have so much for the people who are in hospitals, First Responders. These folks dont have a choice. They have to show up to work and they do it in very selfless ways. I think they deserve so much credit for what they do for the public. As a public official for many years before i came to the American Psychological association, people in government right now are working long days, as well. What i would say is, when youre in that position, you have this duality. On one hand, you have to think about your family and all of the things you have to do in your personal life and you have to compartmentalize that because you have to go to work. That is what a lot of people do. They compartmentalize. Is important for people to take care of themselves. Can unreasonably begin to believe they dont have the ability to, or might even feel guilty to take time off. For those who fly, you know when they talk about if there is an emergency and the oxygen masks come down, you have to put that on you first before you can help other people. That is a really good metaphor for people in the position of First Responders and medical professionals. You have to put your mask on first. If you dont take care of yourself physically and mentally, you will not be able to take care of other folks and you cant feel guilty about that. Asis him porton it is important as the work youre are doing. Host selena from michigan, good morning. Caller good morning, how are you . Host just fine. Go ahead with your question. Caller i have a statement to make. Peoplenoticed a lot of in the stores are depressed about this virus. Because only depressed all of these hang ups and issues over the years from childhood, whether it is sex issues, race, political issues and they are feeling guilty because they know this virus can come down there street, anyone can pass by their house and they will be gone. That is where the depression is coming from. They are looking at their lives and maybe they should have been a better person than they were. Their life can be prolonged. Have a great day. One thing i will say is we know people who have preexisting Mental Health conditions will be at greater risk during these kinds of stressful situations. People have to pay particular attention to how they are doing and if they relied on professional help in the past, reach out if they are starting to have challenges. If they have not, this might be a good time to reach out for that help. The other thing that the caller said that is important to recognize, we are going to get through this as a country and it is important to maintain hope. It does not mean things will be easy, but maintaining hope that things will get better is a really important aspect of this, as well. Schoolsth a lot of being out and businesses closing their doors, we are spending a lot more time with our immediate direct family than a lot of us have expected we would be. One of our social media followers wants to know, will all of this help or hurt the Family Structure . Guest another good question. Great questions this morning. One thing we have thought a lot aout lately is, never we have crisis like this, there are challenges we have. I have described many of those. The other thing that happens is we learn new ways of living, doing our work. I think there is some possibility that there will be things that make us better and stronger as we come out of this. One of the things we have been trying to do for quite a bit of time in my organization, a lot of organizations, how do we reduce our Carbon Footprint as an organization . Organizations have inertia and it is difficult to make those kind of things happen but this is forcing the issue. When we come out of this on the a muchite, we will be in stronger position on that. It might be for families, where youre having to spend more time this is an opportunity to do things that we may have wanted to do historically. Parents are so tired when they get home at the in of the day they do not feel like they have the time to do that. I do think this is an opportunity to be very about thinking about things. You have the time. You are in the space. On the other end, you are in a better family. Host lets talk to rick from louisville, ohio. Caller the media started covering this after the header after ther his or head of the Federal Reserve said he would not go to negative interest rate. The regular virus would be between 5002 six 2000. This started november, december, january, february. It is march. Had three books published. I talk about dehumanizing, this is a ties in, divide and conquer. The media coming on using mushroom clouds, sleeper cells to scare the public into getting into a war. Millions of people died. All these facts prove that you, as a psychologist, i watched cspan bring economist after economist from yale trying to 30,000. The dow at you are coming on here, a psychiatrist, they bring on that lies, scientists about fracking. You are on here brainwashing the people. Ahead and respond, dr. Evans. Guest i am not sure how to respond to that. Im not sure what the question was. People will look at the situation through different lenses and they will see different aspects of this. Clearly theres an economic aspect. But having said that, theres clearly things that, other areas we have to Pay Attention to as well. We jokeother thing strep. Nd talk about is people say, how does that affect us stress. How does that affect the psychologically . Guest its a really important issue. It affects of psychology. It affects us physically. Theres a lot of data that shows that. From a psychological standpoint, depression,ause posttraumatic stress disorder. Epression, anxiety there are so many areas of our life that can be affected by stress. On the physical side, otherascular disease chronic conditions can either occur or be exacerbated by chronic stress. It is important for us to be aware of the signs that we have that we are being stressed and to begin to mitigate that. Most of us know when we are stressed. We have those flags in our own lives. For some people, you start forgetting more things. You start having difficulty thinking about or problemsolving or addressing issues in your life. Those kinds of things can be flags and important signals to us that we need to do something to manage our stress. Host the one thing we have not talked about yet this morning, for a lot of us stuck in our houses, is the importance of exercise and staying healthy. How important is that for us and how do we do that when we are socially distancing ourselves . Guest exercise and physical health is important to our Mental Health. There is a bidirectional relationship. If we want to maintain our Mental Health, we have to take care of our physical health. Eating right, sleeping right, those kinds of things, getting good nutrition, it is important to our Mental Health and vice versa. When we have good Mental Health, it affects our physical health. I think we have to get creative. My wife said she was going to get one for exercise machines. The first thing i said is we dont have room. We are going to figure out how to deal with that. We cant do the gym anymore. People are going to have to make some choices. Fortunately, there are good programs on the internet where people can do exercises and exercise routines and sometimes with a virtual coach even if they dont have equipment. That is something i would encourage people to look into. Host lets talk to tom, who is calling from georgia. Good morning. Caller good morning, gentlemen. How are you this morning . My comment is i am a city worker and i do my job well. I have a manual labor type job. I am in my 60s and im a type two diabetic. The things that concerns me, i might lose my job over this, the thing that concerns me is all of the top employees in city hall, it is shutting down. I am out here working as we speak. I am at work now. I am just as scared as the next person dealing with the public. All they keep telling me is if you are sick, dont come to work. It should not come to this level. There is no arrangement being made for smalltime workers who have to work if they want to eat and pay their bills or go bankrupt. I chose my life status, my working status, so i am not complaining. Like i said, i am just as scared as everyone else and i dont feel it should get to the status of where i am in a coffin before it is taken seriously in my situation. Guest another very good point. It is really important for us to make sure peoples basic needs are addressed to this crisis. A lot of people are losing jobs or income. If we dont take care of that, it will be difficult for people to deal with any other aspect of their lives. I am here in washington. I know what is happening in terms of what is being considered in legislation to make sure if people lose their jobs they will still have a way of supporting themselves and their family through some kind of payment. I think that is enormously important as we are managing ourselves through this crisis. I would also like to say to this caller in particular, people that still have to do their work, they are dealing with the things everyone elses dealing with but they still have to show up for work and be present. I want to thank him and congratulate him for just being that kind of person that is showing up and doing what they need to do to help the public. Host we know there are some people who call themselves introverts and some people call themselves extroverts. We have a social media follower who wants to know, what should we do as extroverts when we are facing social isolation . This social isolation makes me uncomfortable. Guest we were talking earlier, we are going to have to use new ways to keep social connectedness. I encourage people to use technology in a way to help do that. Whether it is through the internet, apps, facetiming, those kind of things. We are seeing some Creative Things people are doing. If you have not discovered one, maybe you can create one. Host lets go to our next caller, brandon in dover, delaware. Good morning. Caller how are you doing . I have a couple different points. I am in delaware. The only thing open around here our stores. They are telling everyone to shut down and stay in the house. You still have walmart open, sams club, you still have these places open where everyone is at. They tell you dont go to church yet there are people packed into sams club. Me and my people still do things. People in dover, delaware, we are doing what we want, still moving around. I understand there are only a couple cases. Nobody even knows nobody that has it. Im not saying its not real. I believe there is the flu going around. We do think people are going crazy for nothing in a sense. Do you see what im saying . Guest what i would say is, a lot of this crisis is about not just will this affect me . What are my behaviors that i have to engage in to help other people stay well . This is an area where Public Officials can do a better job of explaining that it is not just about what can happen to me, but what are my behaviors and how might they affect Vulnerable People in our community is . People who are immune compromised and the elderly. I think we have to keep reminding ourselves of that and making sure we are doing things to keep those folks safe. Host how would you suggest we talk about coronavirus to our children and elderly parents, who might not completely understand what is going on . What should we say to them . Guest four children, to be age develop mentally appropriate. Parents have a good sense of how to explain things to their children. I think it is important for Young Children to say it is unlikely this will be something that will make them sick, at least that is what the data says now. It is important to say that, to explain what a virus is. For really Young Children, you might want to talk about germs, a concept they understand, and how those germs can make grandma or older people sicker. Using that kind of common language that children understand, it could help them understand what is going on. For older people, it is a different set of challenges that have to do with their behavior and things they can do to protect themselves. I have a number of friends a motherinlaw and friends who have parents who are older. It has been interesting listening to the conversations around convincing folks about what they need to do in order to stay safe. I think it is important for us to have those conversations. At the end of the day, we want the older individuals in our community to stay safe through this crisis. Host lets talk to our next caller from portland, oregon. Caller good morning to both of you. Host go ahead. Caller i have three questions. It is important for me to hear your statement about the importance of faithbased activities. [indiscernible] i think faithbased activities covers all of them. Host i did not quite understand her. Guest it sounded like she was talking about faith and how important it that is. It is another area of research that shows how important faith is for people. People who are part of faith communities are healthier in some ways for a variety of reasons. One is the social support that i talked about. To the extent that people get a lot of comfort and support through their faith community, i think it is important through this crisis to stay connected to the community. Host lets talk to george from middleton, ohio. George, good morning. Caller good morning. An independent voter and a first time voter at the age of 35, i know what this kind of scare is doing to the economy and it is crazy. In my industry, i do aerospace, we have at governor make sure we keep the Aerospace Industry going. I work with thousands of employees. Many have run out of facemasks, hand sanitizer, things to keep us healthy. We are having individuals come back from overseas and come to work and we are all working in ohio. Are we safe to say there will be an election coming up . Guest that is something i cant comment on. I dont know that. It will be difficult. There are political leaders that will have to make tough choices, particularly if this crisis continues to go on the way it is. Host des moines, iowa, good morning. Caller good morning. My question is, we are quarantining ourselves, trying to do what is right. My issue is, my husband is older and he is in the generation that he can be very much affected. I am not. I work as a massage therapist. I am hands on with all of my clients. I am concerned that we are quarantined together, but neither one of us know if we have the virus. How can you bunker down and quarantine with someone if you dont have the ability to be tested . I dont want to infect my husband, or i dont want him to infect me and it is really playing with my head. I am trying to figure out how i can stop having that message go over and over in my head. They say everyone does not need to be tested, but i feel like we all need to be tested so we dont in fact our loved ones. What do you think about that . Guest this is one of the dilemmas and part of the uncertainty that is creating a lot of anxiety. At this point, we have to think about this as a marathon and not a sprint. There are certain aspects of how we are managing the crisis now that will change over time and, frankly, hopefully get better over time. We are at a point in the crisis where there is a high degree of uncertainty. We dont have the testing and things that are needed. A lot of people are working on that and hopefully those things will get better over time. In terms of the psychology of this, we have to rely on the best information that is available. One of the other ways to help manage our stress and anxiety around what is happening is to have a small number of trusted sources of information. One of the things that people can do that actually works against them is to just take into much information, sometimes conflicting information, because they are going to a lot of different sources. I would stick to sources like the cdc or governmental sources. Johns hopkins has a really good website and great information. There are some really trusted brands and sources that can help give us guidance on that. I would limit the amount of information to those areas and try to stick to those guidelines as much as possible. Host dr. Evans, here is a question from a social media follower who is wondering how to talk to people. The young generation is not taking this seriously, not practicing social distancing and dont seem to be sensitive to the needs of others. They call the virus the boomer doomer. How do you sensitized to those that are desensitized . Guest we talked about the messaging around this. A lot of the messaging has emphasized the impact it can have on us as individuals. People who are young feel like this will not be a big deal for them. They believe they can take that risk. For that community, particularly younger people who are not following guidelines, talk about the impact this will have on other people in the community Vulnerable People in the community. Their parents, potentially, or their grandparents, and really emphasize that. That is the kind of messaging that is much more likely to get Behavioral Changes that we need. We also know social norming is important. The degree to which we can create social norms that reinforce the kind of behaviors we are talking about and makes it much more likely that people will align with that and we would not see the behavior in terms of people taking risks and not heeding advice of Public Health officials. Host lets get a couple of more calls in. Minneapolis, minnesota. William, good morning. Caller thank you for taking my call. You are a doctor, right . Guest i am a psychologist. My training is in psychology. Caller here is my question for you. Who do you think has the most interaction with patients in hospitals and Nursing Homes . And assisted living facilities . Who has the most interaction . Guest usually it is the nursing staff in most facilities. Caller you said nursing staff. The nurses aids, assistance, have more interaction with patients in these facilities and who are the most unprotected . Nursing assistance. You are going to have nursing assistants are the ones who are most vulnerable and will be the ones most infected and probably the ones ending up being carriers. What do you think they are doing about that . What will we do when we dont have any nurses to take care of these patients . Guest you are raising an important issue that there are people that are in this crisis and they will be disproportionately affected because of their jobs and the type of work they do. We have to do everything we can as a society and a community to make sure those people are protected. It sounds like you might be doing that kind of work. I really hope the facility you are working for is doing everything it can to make sure you are safe, you are well, and you are in a position to stay healthy throughout this crisis. Host lets take one more caller, from massachusetts. Good morning. Caller hi. The reason i am calling is i wanted to make a statement. A lot of people are concerned about the response not being robust enough, quick enough. I want to thank everyone who is involved that is providing support and guidance to make sure everyone understands there are a lot of people working toward the end and making sure everyone gets taken care of in the best possible manner, given the constraints we have had. No one could have ever predicted what the pandemic was going to do to any country. I want to thank everyone involved. Guest that is such a great comment because at the end of the day, we are going to get through this. It is really important for us to understand the psychological impact that this is having on us. And to make sure we are doing everything we can as a nation and a community to make sure we are attending to that. The reality is our Psychological Health affects our decisionmaking ability, our ability to problem solve through this situation. And for all of those folks who are doing what they have to do in order to help us get through this, i would also amplify the thanks you are giving to them, but also say we have to Pay Attention to this aspect. I would like to see a more robust inclusion of the Mental Health aspect as we go into this longer, because we know we will have these kinds of impacts. If we are going to come out on the other hand, and make sure we are mentally well, that will be really important to our success. Host if any of our viewers are followers feel like to any professional or outbound help, who should they contact . One thing, i really like to point people to our website, because a lot of information is on her website. We have specialized information for parents, Public Officials, people who are faculty, many people in the middle of their training. I would encourage people to go to apa. Org. Professionaleeding help, probably the most efficient way to get that is to go through your insurance carrier. They can tell you who is in their network and help you get connected to those folks. If you are uninsured, you can go to your local, county government, state government. I would start with state government. Sometimes they are run by the county government. I start with the states. Reach out and indicate you are uninsured, but need some help. Host we would like to think our guest for being here and helping us survive this crisis mentally. Thank our guest for being here in helping us survive this crisis mentally. Take you live to the White House Briefing room where President Trump and the Coronavirus Task force are about to hold a press conference on the federal response to the coronavirus epidemic. This is live coverage on cspan. Conversations] pres. Trump that you very much. A
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