Covid-19: Our response so far

The group established eight workstreams, four focused on the pandemic itself, including disease prevention, wellbeing of staff, care of relatives and bereavement, and recovery from Covid.

The others looked at the broader impacts, including adapting psychological services, the effects of confinement and isolation, working differently, and community action and resilience.

Between them the workstreams have produced more than 70 resources, including documents, webinars and video clips, that are available via the dedicated webpage.

Recent activity has included resources on:

• facilitating community resilience
• supporting health behaviours
• priorities for research
• psychologists' wellbeing during the pandemic

The latter also include a series of 12 short video clips on the 10 wellbeing themes identified.

The society has also made significant direct contributions at national level to public health strategies, health and care staff wellbeing approaches and the NHS post-Covid rehab programme.

Psychologists within the groups have made frequent appearances on national television and radio explaining the psychological aspects of the pandemic and the work of the BPS.

The BPS response has also had a positive impact internationally as described in a recent Psychologist article.

Chair of the Coordinating Group, David Murphy, said:

"I've always believed that if we collaborate across the different groups within the society we're capable of doing great things, but even I'm in awe of the incredible things we have achieved during the pandemic.

I've personally never seen anything like it; national governments, the NHS, & other professional organizations have been coming to us saying 'we've seen what you're doing and we really want your input', that hasn't always been the case before."