Reference no: EM133606139

Since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, the Chinese government, hospitals, and psychological and psychiatric centers have taken measurements to address mental health problems (Bao et al., 2020). A national guideline for psychological crisis intervention during the COVID19 outbreak, in which psychological protection measures for medical workers were provided (National Health Commission of the People's Republic of China 2020b). Psychological intervention teams were set up to deliver mental health services to medical staff. In addition, a variety of online mental health services through communication programs, such as WeChat, Weibo, and TikTok, were gradually put into practice for people in need (Liu et al., 2020a; Zhang et al., 2020a,b). As the development of the epidemic, further psychological support and measurements should be provided, especially for frontline medical workers. There were several limitations to our study. First, medical workers participated in the investigation via the Internet without random sampling, so the response rate was hard to estimate. However, the relatively large number of participants reduced this potential sampling bias. Second, the mental health status of the participants before the COVID-19 outbreak was not available, making it difficult to know whether their pre-existing mental health status also impacted the posttraumatic morbidity of COVID-19.