key: cord-309436-5qoo3a8i authors: Balanzá–Martínez, V.; Atienza–Carbonell, B.; Kapczinski, F.; De Boni, R. B. title: Lifestyle behaviours during the COVID‐19 – time to connect date: 2020-05-12 journal: Acta Psychiatr Scand DOI: 10.1111/acps.13177 sha: doc_id: 309436 cord_uid: 5qoo3a8i Loneliness and social isolation are associated with poor mental and physical health and may increase the likelihood of common mental disorders (depressive and anxiety disorders), substance use, and cognitive decline1,2 . At this moment, people around the globe have been urged to self-isolate and refrain from social interaction due to the COVID-19 pandemic. From public health and preventative care perspectives, there is a pressing need to provide individuals, communities and health agencies with information and interventions to maintain the healthiest possible lifestyle while in isolation. physical-distancing policies. Lifestyle behaviours including dietary changes, restricted physical activity and the effect of increased indoor and screen time remain an under-researched area (12) . Of note, towards the end of the SARS epidemic, social support, mental health awareness and other lifestyles changes (exercise, more time for relaxation and restorative sleep) were all associated with decreased perceived stress and incidence of PTSD (13) . The ongoing COVID-19 outbreak has led to an unprecedented public health crisis worldwide. From our perspective, several actions are required to minimize the transition to a social crisis with long-lasting consequences. It is time that such interventions start to include lifestyle guidelines with the aim to translate evidence into public health policies. This is crucial for the vulnerable groups, such as low-income families and children (14, 15) , the elderly, socially isolated individuals and people with severe mental disorders (SMD). Regarding patients with SMD requiring admission, the field is recommending home hospitalizations to keep patients safe while avoiding formal hospital admissions (16) . Regarding lifestyle guidelines, recent reviews have emphasized the role of maintaining a healthy nutritional status (17) and engaging in physical exercise at home (11) in the management of COVID-19 outbreak. Similar recommendations were made at the time of the influenza pandemic in 1918, when public health nurses adhered to precepts of good hygiene, nutrition, fresh air and rest (18) . However, such lifestyle guidelines are not entirely evidence based. Indeed, they are basically the same guidance used during non-pandemic times. Observational data on how the general public and patients with psychiatric disorders actually deal with self-care, nutrition, physical activity or restorative sleep during confinement are lacking and represent a research gap. To address such gap, observational studies of lifestyle behaviours during the compulsory isolation are timely and clearly a necessary step for the design of rational and effective public policies. Such studies would provide the much-needed evidence to design interventions to prevent a new pandemic of psychiatric disorders and cardiometabolic comorbidities as proposed by the COVID-19 Snapshot Monitoring (COSMO) initiative (19) . Furthermore, data collection must be fast and provide useful and reliable information in real time to health authorities, media and citizens. Psychiatry and behavioural medicine may be particularly benefited from surveys and interventions carried out remotely to reach a large number of individuals in need. Large-scale surveys will require international networking to address changes in lifestyle behaviours and the expected consequences after the COVID-19 (9) . We urge the field to embrace and extend eHealth and mobile health interventions, online monitoring surveys and big data technologies. Remote data collection using social networks, georeferencing and the available tools provided by data science is available, feasible and necessary in the context of this pandemic. Such tools provide the means of groups across the globe to connect and generate the realtime necessary data to inform policymakers. The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this editorial. Dr. Balanz a-Mart ınez acknowledges the support from Instituto de Salud Carlos III (PI16/1770, PROBILIFE Study). Dr. De Boni acknowledges long-term funding from CNPq and FAPERJ. Dr. Balanz a-Mart ınez has been a consultant, advisor or Continuing Medical Education (CME) speaker over the last 3 years for the following companies: Angelini, Ferrer, Lundbeck, Nutrici on M edica and Otsuka. The other authors declare no conflict of interest. V. 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