The author follows up and replies to the three invited commentaries on his social psychiatry manifesto published in the first issue of World Social Psychiatry, emphasizing points of agreement with three practical examples of how research, practice, and policymaking can benefit from social psychiatry – or falter without implementing its powerful and relevant insights.

The COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic and its consequences have seriously affected Americans' physical and mental health. We developed Project CommUnity, an integrated individual and population health response to the COVID-19 pandemic based on the preexisting foundational principles of the Florida International University Green Family Foundation Neighborhood Health Education Learning Program (NeighborhoodHELP). NeighborhoodHELP identifies and addresses the social determinants of health (SDOH) that can improve the health outcomes for household members by emphasizing social accountability and interprofessional education while providing patient and household-centered care. A lack of pandemic related mental health literature led us to build on a disaster mental health framework that is informed by our community resulting in the elaboration of specific concerns and our program's responses to them. Integrating the systematic assessment of SDOH and addressing these factors as a routine component of clinical care has the potential to improve the health of our underserved patients. We discuss how NeighborhoodHELP has mobilized to address the psychosocial needs of our households by expanding upon our existing programming and providing a range of tailored services in response to the current crisis. It is our aim to present how a social understanding of the current disaster can guide the development of an integrated health care response, focusing on the needs of low-income minority households who are disproportionately affected and least equipped to respond to the burdens suddenly imposed on them.

There is evidence from earlier studies that the probability to be traumatized by pictures of disasters is associated with a high level of exposure, the traumatic significance of the pictured event, prior exposure to similar real-life events, and personality variables. Preexisting symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, and anxiety are predictors of the higher impact of mass media (MM) and social media (SM) contributing to a vicious cycle. We aimed to discuss mechanisms through which MM and SM may cause massive indirect traumatization of populations and that may be relevant for the psychosocial conditions that emerged during COVID-19 pandemic news bombardment. The current pandemic is an example of a serious and deadly disease with extremely enhanced representation in the MM and SM and high rates of unverified, false, and sometimes apocalyptic information. Both mass as well as social medial tendencies to select their news according to their controversial and often negatively affective load contribute to this. This phenomenon is characterized as “infodemic” – a situation that may have profound consequences for mental health due to undermining feelings of personal safety, corroding social cohesion, and inducing conflicts and bitterness. Pandemic-infodemic situation has shown that complicated but inevitable turn to higher transparency including ethically motivated restrictions of anonymity and the contents of the web– measures that, however, have to be sensitively balanced with the demands guaranteeing the freedom of opinion, the freedom of speech and the avoidance of censorship. In general, there is a need for complex solutions, difficult decisions, and intricate balances.

Background: Mental health needs and concerns of young persons in resource-poor settings remain poorly understood and inadequate. How young people understand and perceive mental well-being might differ based on their setting. Hence, the aim of this study was to understand how young people in urban settings perceived mental health and well-being. It also explores their perceived barriers to mental well-being. Materials and Methods: A qualitative study, using focus group discussions and in-depth interviews (IDIs), was conducted with youth aged 18–24 years from three different settings, namely educational institutions, workspace, and urban slums, in Chennai city, South India. The following three themes related to mental health well-being were identified (i) What does it mean? (ii) What affects it? and (iii) How do young people cope? Results: Four focus group discussions (9–10 participants in each) and 15 IDIs were conducted. Findings revealed that mental well-being was affected by relationship issues, academic/career pressures, and social mores; seeking mental health care was stigmatizing and differences in societal norms left young women feeling vulnerable and frustrated. Conclusion: Results highlight the various mental health challenges faced by young people in urban settings in India and underscore the need for more research to better understand the interactions between individual and environmental factors. These, in turn, would inform the development of early interventions to promote mental health and help cope with mental problems among young people.

Aim: To evaluate the prevalence of specific beliefs held by people with respect to SARS-2-CoV (COVID-19) infection. Study Design: Web-based cross-sectional survey by using nonprobability snow-balling sampling technique. Methodology: The survey-specific questionnaire designed based on the review of literature on the prevailing myths/beliefs was circulated by an online cross-sectional survey through the SurveyMonkey^® platform using the WhatsApp^®, both individually and through the WhatsApp groups, by using a nonprobability snow-balling sampling technique. Results: 1695 people participated in the survey, of which 1636 responses were found to be complete and were analyzed. The mean age of the participants was 34.55 years, and two-thirds of the participants were males (n = 1092). About one-third of the participants were educated up to graduation (32.1%), and about one-fifth were healthcare workers. Incorrect beliefs related to various preventive aspects, modes of spread of infection, and treatments were present in a significant proportion of people, with a wide variation for specific issues. When the number of participants with at least one incorrect belief related to any of the aspects of COVID-19 infection was evaluated, except for four participants, all the participants reported at least one incorrect belief. Male and female participants differed significantly in few beliefs. Conclusions: This survey highlights a widespread prevalence of myths/misconceptions in society regarding various aspects of COVID-19 infection, which warrants more focus on awareness programs.

General Purpose: To identify evolved human social traits that undermine effective interventions against social, environmental, and other threats to health, wellbeing, and survival of individuals and our species. Methods: To identify destructive individual and group social behaviors, the author surveyed 21^st century interpretations of behavioral issues raised in primatologists studies of chimpanzees and bonobos. Drawing from a wide range of physical and social sciences, he then selected specific issues regarding health, wellbeing, and survival for study in humans. To test functionality, concepts were challenged for implications. To explore practicality, applications were identified and models for possible clinical and policy use were developed. Results: Analyses identified specific impediments to effective human responses to threatening or otherwise challenging circumstances and their implications. Using two models for psychiatric interventions, the author explored potentials for intervention against the involved dysfunctional behavioral traits. Conclusions: An evolutionary biological phylogenetic focus clarifies why humans experience dysfunctional traits as a result of evolution. This provides a broader, important grounding for further psychiatric research and development of interventions.

World War 2 (WW2) has witnessed the rise of influential personalities such as Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt. Many causes have been recorded in a history as causes of WW2; however, we argue that there has been complex psychological interaction between the leaders involved in the background of a crisis charged with paranoia and anxiety. Personality factors of the leaders probably helped as a catalyst in setting a cascade of events that resulted in mass causality. We discuss the psychological aspect of WW2 taking examples of few involved personalities.

Much attention has been focused on the well-being of health-care staff and more recently medical students. This small-scale study formed a part of a major international initiative and used standardized measures of health, substance misuse, and burnout. We found high levels of stress from several key sources alongside the rates of 80% and 83% for the disengagement and exhaustion subscales of the Oldenburg burnout scale. The rates of mental health problems as measured by the General Health Questionnaire-12 short version were 68%.

COVID-19 pandemic has pronounced unimaginable ripples in the normal functioning of the world we live in and has also compelled us to bring a paradigm shift in health-care provisions and how we practice it. Telehealth services have almost dramatically replaced traditional in-person treatment, especially in mental health services. This significant change in the practice of medicine has forced us to question our very perception of ideal health care. Telemedicine will do for health care what the personal computer has done for the office. Or so its proponents believe. Its opponents believe that it represents a threat to the doctor–patient relationship and is an intrinsically unsafe way of practicing medicine. In this brief clinical update, we delve into the core of telemental health services and try to unravel its impact on human lives during this pandemic.