Using Therapeutic Touch to Alleviate the Negative Mental Health Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has made evident a widespread uncertainty about the future. With necessary interventions (such as new policies requesting avoidance of social gatherings, face coverings, and social distancing), the unspoken need for physical touch and social warmth has become a public outcry. The purpose of this book is to address this acute social condition by sharing what the authors believe has demonstrated therapeutic value for individuals and may be broadly applied among the populace. The time between a cry for help and its answer can make a very big difference to those who feel discarded by society. This book describes a means to help an isolated public feel together again. When those who feel abandoned are haptically reminded by a soft tap on the shoulder from a real friend during their time of greatest need, their anxiety is often displaced by a sense that someone has been listening to them all along. This text proposes an Internet of Things intervention which pairs those who care with those who need care. The moment that doubts creep in, any time of the day or the night, an immediate tap on the shoulder or squeeze of the wrist will remind them how much they matter. Therapeutic touch may help alleviate intrusive thoughts, by making evident what is so intangible inside.

The need for a psychological vaccine seems very evident. Even though humanity is making strides against the physical virus itself, it has taken a toll on the human psyche too. We seem to have no defenses against things like social isolation, chronic loss of employment/worth, and the sudden and prolonged destabilization of an erstwhile faith in our leaders and way of life. The benefits of this publication include the dissemination of such a verbal vaccine - which might function to inoculate a troubled public against the growing malaise. It should be published for the same reason handbooks and pamphlets are often distributed during times of civil unrest, to reassure both caregivers and their clients that there is a way to fight back against this spreading pessimism and uncertainty, grounded in the scientific method and tentative evidence-based results.

The target audience is the professional psychological community (who can expertly guide clients) and the self-help community (who are less trusting of professionals but still seeking professional advice). Both behavioral health professionals and self-help communities may be attracted to the cost-effective, intuitively promising topics included in this book. In addition, AI and robotic professionals/engineers may find this book of much interest.