Health >> JAMA Current Issue

COVID-19 ARDS and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Family Members After ICU Discharge—Reply

Link [2022-07-20 10:11:02]

In Reply Among family members of patients with COVID-19 ARDS included in our study, half were indeed spouses. Dr Lin and colleagues suggest that as these family members were quarantined, this might have been an additional source of PTSD. However, recent findings seem to challenge this hypothesis. In a large longitudinal analysis, Aknin et al reported that changes in mental health measures during the first 15 months of the COVID-19 pandemic were small. Moreover, the negative association between policy stringency and mental health was mostly mediated by observed physical distancing and perceptions of the government’s handling of the pandemic. Lin and colleagues also raise the hypothesis that nonrespondents in our study were family members with higher PTSD rates. However, to the best of our knowledge, this hypothesis has never been assessed or confirmed. We agree with Lin and colleagues that the visual analog scale is not a validated instrument to assess social support in this setting. Studies using validated tools should assess how the level of social support affects mental health outcomes in family members.