Page 26 - NAMAH-Apr-2022

Namah Vol. 30, Issue 1, 24th April 2022

state of well-being, how can they offer treatment • Burn-out due to chronic fatigue which
and healing to the care receivers? Aren’t we all affects physical, psychological, emotional,
emitters of the vibration that we carry within spiritual health.
ourselves? This was the genesis of Project • Anxiety about carrying the Covid-19 virus
Susthiti. The Susthiti signifies harmonious when the Covid healthcare worker returns
stability in Sanskrit. to his/her family home with a child or
ageing relative.
Every project begins with deep questions to our
self. Given the enormous deluge on mainstream According to the World Health Organization,
and social media on the Covid pandemic, “Mental health is a state of well-being in
we had to find threads of knowledge and which the individual realises his or her own
practice, while trying to know the unknown. abilities, can cope with the normal stresses
To begin with, we dived into what the medical of life, can work productively and is able to
fraternity said and wrote. make a contribution to his or her community
(2)”.
The Indian government addressed the
whole gamut of Covid healthcare workers While searching for scientific literature, we
with honour as ‘Covid Warriors’ and had found, ‘Receptive Music Therapy to reduce
a repository which helped us to grasp the stress and improve well-being in Italian
various nodes on how the Covid healthcare clinical staff involved in COVID-19
chain functions (1). For over two weeks, pandemic: A preliminary study’. It was a
we spent time reaching out to 30 Covid study published by Elsevier in April 2020
healthcare workers, i.e. doctors, nurses and and it provided us with some hope when
paramedics serving at isolated Covid-19 it said that, “Clinical Staff (CS) can suffer
wards at five hospitals across India, to grasp from loneliness, anxiety, fear, fatigue, sleep
the challenging task of providing therapy. disorders, which are likely to result in a
poorer quality of healthcare for patients.
Here are the strands we managed to grasp. […] What is more, long-term psychological
Four prominent challenges emerged from consequences are also likely to be brought
our conversations with the Covid Warriors: about, including higher levels of burnout,
psychological distress and post-traumatic
• Stress with symptoms of insomnia and stress disorder”. This paper gave us hope
indigestion, since their circadian rhythms that we were on the right path of therapy.
were being disrupted, especially with
continuous long night-shifts across weeks
with little days to rest and quarantine
themselves.
• Other stress-related symptoms included
chronic back and knee pain and extreme
dehydration due to wearing the un-
comfortable Personal Protective Equipment
(PPE) kit during their multi-hour shifts.

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