First Reactions and Attitudes of Psychiatric Workers in Budapest Psychiatric Care Units Regarding the COVID-19 Pandemic.

OBJECTIVE: To focus on the first feelings, attitudes, and planned reactions of psychiatric workers in Hungary to the news of the appearance of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and to examine any differences between psychiatrists/psychologists and nurses/other professionals regarding these attitudes.
METHODS: Hungarian psychiatric workers (N = 119) including psychiatrists/psychologists (n = 78) and nurses/other professionals (n = 41) participated in the study. To measure attitudes, a questionnaire was designed consisting of 7 questions and filled out within 1-3 days after the declaration of emergency in response to COVID-19 in Hungary on March 11, 2020.
RESULTS: Psychiatric workers, especially psychiatrists/psychologists, regarded information gathering from valid sources as important. When examining the first feelings, we found that the psychiatrists/psychologists group tended to feel higher extent of anxiety, while the nurses/other professionals group showed higher extent of hope. When investigating willingness to work in the pandemic situation, a lower percentage of Hungarian psychiatric workers (58%) would choose to continue working compared to previous research. Answers to open-ended questions revealed that denial was the most frequent coping reaction.
CONCLUSIONS: These differences could be attributed to the finding that psychiatrists/psychologists, who had faced the reality of the virus situation via the news, tended to have more realistic attitudes toward the virus, while nurses/other professionals, who had avoided valid information, tended to have less realistic attitudes. © Copyright 2021 Physicians Postgraduate Press, Inc.