Protective Strategies During Acute Stress, Such as COVID-19

Importance The novel Coronavirus disease 2019, or COVID-19 pandemic, has had a tremendous impact upon the world. It has affected not only the physical health, but has had a deleterious impact of the mental health of those throughout the world. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an influx of mental health visits for treatment of depression, anxiety, substance use disorders, acute stress disorder, PTSD, and suicide. Unfortunately, at the time of publication, the United States has also been profoundly affected by compounding stressful events including severe weather with subsequent outages and black-outs, election distress, and civil unrest. With evolving measures of lockdowns and social distancing in place, it becomes imperative to understand protective strategies which serve to lessen the severity and duration of short-term and long-term effects of acute stress. Some protective strategies which have been found to be effective include exercise, meditation, and mindfulness, and emotional intelligence