key: cord-0900575-jbjktz4m authors: Cortez, Pedro Afonso; Joseph, Shijo John; Das, Nileswar; Bhandari, Samrat Singh; Shoib, Sheikh title: Tools to measure psychological impact of COVID-19 pandemic: What do we have in the platter? date: 2020-08-29 journal: Asian J Psychiatr DOI: 10.1016/j.ajp.2020.102371 sha: 51e9822808a856fb6747d0c8ec9a3b9e2be494dd doc_id: 900575 cord_uid: jbjktz4m nan measure the burden of psychological and psychosocial problems in the community to provide timely psychological first-aid to those in need. (Das et al., 2020) Structured and validated tools will be crucial in this aspect to comprehensively address the following areas: For early detection of psychiatric manifestations and distinguishing normal reactions to stresses from mental disorders. Commonly used and already existing screening scales during are Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS), Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ), Impact of Event Scale Revised (IES-R), Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) etc. For those who are already suffering from pre-existing psychiatric illness or those who have developed diagnosable psychiatric illness during the pandemic, should be assessed using already existing diagnostic and prognostic scales like Hamilton Anxiety Scale (HAMA), Hamilton Depression Scale (HAMD), Addiction Severity Index (ASI) etc. Assessment of the impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic would be important to understand the functional outcome in those who may not have developed any psychiatric symptoms but continued to suffer poor quality of life because of the pandemicsuch as refugees, migrant workers etc. WHO Quality of Life scale (WHO-QoL), Wellness scales can be useful in such a context. Those who have developed symptoms or have worsening of pre-existing illness should be monitored longitudinally for assessment of illness course and also to measure the outcome. For example, longitudinal assessment of PTSD symptoms in frontline healthcare workers would be important to understand the effect of psychological trauma in their quality of lives. With the emergence of increased research work related to the COVID-19 pandemic, several tools have been recently validated and are helpful not only to study the psychological impact of the pandemic but, may also play a role in assessment and management of patients on a normal basis. J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f  It would help in objective assessment with minimum observer bias and standardized cut-off scores.  Scores can be compared across various countries (e.g. developed vs developing) and various subgroups of populations (male vs females; frontline healthcare workers vs non-frontline healthcare worker) and help to guide mental health professionals to understand who are at higher risk of psychosocial issues.  It would definitely help in policy making process in terms of understanding who are at-risk and also, to guide in where the funds be allocated and how rapid mental health related actions should be taken, as the crisis phase evolves over time  Scales can also help understand the effectiveness of measures/interventions provided in the community in the form of relief (before-after studies).  The longitudinal outcome can be better assessed if standardized scales are applied over time to better understand the impact of the pandemic. Promptness of international medical bodies and global health researchers has led to the rapid growth of evidence-based mental health literature. With new scales rapidly developed and validated in various language, different ethnic groups and various sub-groups of populations has given us better hope to battle against the mental illness pandemic following the COVID-19 outbreak. Further researches are needed with a focus to the various far-reaching aspects of the current pandemic including the development of new scales for example to assess emotional issues in children during school closure (Joseph et al., 2020b) ; and hence, to generate better and more generalizable evidence for future preparedness. Also, important is development of scales which are culturally and linguistically valid based on the areas where tools are going to be applied. 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