Promoting Mental Health During Pandemic – a digital platform for monitoring and intervention

This project aims to understand in which way the COVID-19 pandemic influences mental health in the general Portuguese adult population. This information enabled the development of a digital platform for adequate mental health care and guidance to the ones in need during the pandemic.

We intend to identify protective and risk factors for mental health during pandemic. To explore this, over 2000 participants have provided data regarding their home environment, employment status, sociodemographic variables and personality differences. Moreover, they filled weekly online questionnaires (during the time-period when the confinement measures were stricter) measuring anxiety, depression, stress, and obsessive-compulsive symptoms.

Since adequate e-health technologies are needed to cope with situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the tasks of this project was to design a mental health web app (saudemental.p5.pt). The main goals are to assess psychological distress and to help people manage their symptoms and emotional difficulties.

Funding Agency

FCT

Project Reference

Project Members

Main Project Outcomes

S. Queirós, “Right ventricular segmentation in multi-view cardiac MRI using a unified U-net model”, in E. Puyol Antón et al. (eds) Statistical Atlases and Computational Models of the Heart. Multi-Disease, Multi-View, and Multi-Center Right Ventricular Segmentation in Cardiac MRI Challenge. STACOM 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13131, pp. 287-295, Springer, Cham, 2022.

“Best Paper Award in the M&Ms-2 Challenge”, by M&Ms2 Challenge organizers and the Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI) Society.

Main Project Outcomes

1 Silva Moreira P, Ferreira S, Couto B, et al. Protective Elements of Mental Health Status during the COVID-19 Outbreak in the Portuguese Population. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 2021; 18: 1910.

2 Picó-Pérez M, Ferreira S, Couto B, Raposo-Lima C, Machado-Sousa M, Morgado P. Sociodemographic and lifestyle predictors of mental health adaptability during COVID-19 compulsory confinement: A longitudinal study in the Portuguese population. Journal of Affective Disorders 2021; 295: 797–803.

3 Ferreira S, Sousa MM, Moreira PS, Sousa N, Picó-Pérez M, Morgado P. A Wake-up Call for Burnout in Portuguese Physicians During the COVID-19 Outbreak: National Survey Study. JMIR Public Health and Surveillance 2021; 7: e24312.

4 dos Santos CF, Picó-Pérez M, Morgado P. COVID-19 and Mental Health—What Do We Know So Far? Front Psychiatry 2020; 11. DOI:10.3389/fpsyt.2020.565698.

5 da Silva JG, Silva CS, Alexandre B, Morgado P. Health Literacy of the Inland Population in Mitigation Phase 3.2 of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Portugal: A Descriptive Cross-Sectional Study. PJP 2020; 38: 51–61.

6 Gomes da Silva J, Silva CS, Alexandre B, Morgado P. Education as a Predictor Factor for Knowledge of COVID-19 in Portugal. Frontiers in Public Health 2021; 9. https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpubh.2021.680726 (accessed May 7, 2022).

7 Trifan A, Matos S, Morgado P, Oliveira JL. Bilingual emotion analysis in social media throughout the COVID19 pandemic in Portugal. 2020; published online June 30. https://openreview.net/forum?id=KXptqXxP6oO (accessed July 19, 2020).

8 Morgado P. Saúde mental em tempos de pandemia COVID-19: uma perspetiva da Medicina. In: Universidade em Tempos de Pandemia, Braga. UMinho Editora, 2020. http://repositorium.sdum.uminho.pt/ (accessed March 20, 2021).

9 Costa AD, Fernandes A, Ferreira S, et al. How Long Does Adaption Last for? An Update on the Psychological Impact of the Confinement in Portugal. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 2022; 19: 2243.