AUTHOR=Lu Xiaohua , Wang Xinyuan , Zhang Yingjun , Ma Zheng , Huo Shixin , Bu Tao , Tang Daisheng 

TITLE=Online Emotional Support Accompany Group Intervention and Emotional Change of the Public During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Multi-Period Data Analysis From China

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=Volume 13 - 2022

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.840686

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2022.840686

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=COVID-19 makes it difficult to adopt traditional face to face psychological intervention under this situation because of the blocked down and social distancing, which brings big psychological crisis to the public among the global. To explore the emotional change of the public in China at the outburst of the pandemic at different phases, to establish an online working platform and create a new model of online intervention to hold public emotions under pandemic, and test its effectiveness, so to give advisement for government emergency management system. We established an online organization to work for this program ad innovated a model of online group counseling with Online Emotional Support Accompany Group (OESAG) right after the outburst of pandemic. We analyzed 53 OESAGs from Feb.10-Apr.9, including 555 application forms, 253 feedbacks from members and 139 feedbacks from group leaders by using NVivo and SPSS to explore the evolution and characteristics of the public emotion during COVID-19 and the effectiveness of OESAG. Our results showed that emotion changes of members ranged from shock to depression to positive. The public’s emotions swiftly changed from stress, anxiety and isolation, to hope of returning to work or finding a job during the pandemic with the help of OESAG. OESAG has effectively regulated the negative emotions of members by conducting psychological crisis intervention to provide members a space to communicate with each other, especially the female and frontline staff. Policy makers can set up an online systematic psychological crisis intervention system as soon as possible to make up for the lack of psychological assistance in the emergency management system.