Soft Skills and Psychosocial Counselling in COVID-19 Times: the Changing Tactics

Abstract

Introduction: As the COVID-19 pandemic is increasingly griping the world, it starts effecting the psychosocial health of the patients, health care workers, frontline workers and their dependents. The entire landscape of existing patient psychological counselling and management needs to be changed to avoid fear and misinformation about COVID-19. Material and methods: In this article, we have tried to summarize the rules, regulations and protocols in accordance with government guidelines along with practical implementation of counselling in management of psychological health condition of patients and frontline workers. Conclusion: If used wisely and as per recommendations, psychosocial counselling is a very useful tool in the present COVID-19 pandemic, to avoid spread of misinformation, fear and grief about the disease which creates mental health issue and anxiety among close contacts as well as health care workers.