Coping with Covid with Monica Schoch-Spana and Jud Brewer

Deep Breath In

In this week’s episode, we discuss bystander guilt, convergence, brain hacks and “how you can sneeze on someone’s brain from anywhere in the world”. How can GPs cope with the myriad worries around treating patients during the current pandemic, both on the frontline and in general practice? How do we recognise and break unhelpful anxious behaviour habits and stop fixating on the news? Our guests: Monica Schoch-Spana is a medical anthropologist and a Senior Scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Public Health. She specialises in crisis and risk communication, community resilience to disaster, public engagement in policy-making and public health emergency preparedness. Jud Brewer is an addiction psychiatrist and neuroscientist, specialising in anxiety and habit change. He is the Director of Research and Innovation at Brown University’s Mindfulness Center, an associate professor of behavioural and social sciences at the School of Public Health at Brown, as well as of psychiatry at the university’s medical school. Reading list: Monica's blog on the psychological impacts of covid-19 https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/covid-19s-psychosocial-impacts/ Jud's article in the New York Timeshttps://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/well/mind/a-brain-hack-to-break-the-coronavirus-anxiety-cycle.html GP course: https://drjud.com/health-care-provider-course/ Youtube animation of the NYTimes article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=900cOKCADIk&feature=youtu.be Youtube coronavirus daily videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4NwsyXRbNw&list=PL6sRqjtLfiTTni7oXKpSj2cQ9290lkpKH