Mental health and Covid-19: How are primary health care workers doing in Brazil?

Abstract

In March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) raised the contamination status of Covid-19, a new coronavirus disease (SARS-Cov-2) to pandemic. From this pandemic scenario emerges a greater need for attention to the health worker also regarding the aspects that affect their mental health. The aim of this research is to know and analyze the mental health repercussions of primary health care workers during the Covid-19 pandemic. This is an integrative literature review, which was carried out in the portal of the Virtual Health Library - VHL, being contemplated the bases, Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online (MEDLINE), Latin American and Caribbean Literature on Health Sciences (LILACS) and Scientific Electronic Library Online (SCIELO), Google Scholar and being complemented by manual search in the references and gray literature. Using the descriptors: Mental Health/Mental health, Health Professionals/Health Personnel, COVID-19/COVID-19, Primary Health Care/Primary Health Care. The data were tabulated in Microsoft Excel 2013 spreadsheet. Then, qualitative analysis was performed using Nvivo 10 for Windows. The results of the analysis allowed the creation of three thematic categories, they are: Mental Health and Psychic Illness; Professional Categories and Psychic Illness; Strategies To Combat Psychic Illness. Among the findings, it was possible to observe that the pandemic affected the mental health of the professionals, making the environment more anxiogenic, with uncertainties about the organization of work and an increase in stress in this environment.