Together for Hope and Resilience: A Humanistic Experience by the Vulnerability, Trauma, Resilience and Culture Lab Members during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought stress and anxiety to students, professors, and staff in universities. The effectiveness of members of research laboratories not directly involved in research on the virus may be impacted. At the University of Ottawa, laboratories have been affected by the shutdown of all non-essential activities. An experience in a research laboratory at the University of Ottawa observed that members were affected by anxiety, stress, sleep deregulation, etc. However, a humanistic approach that allowed members to share their COVID-19 experiences in an authentic, empathic atmosphere leads them to regain their effectiveness, create hope, and develop resilience strategies.

Stress, Coping, and Resilience Before and After COVID-19: A Predictive Model Based on Artificial Intelligence in the University Environment

“…Resilience can be defined as a person’s ability to face the challenges and difficulties of life in a positive and adaptive manner, as well as the capacity to recover from an adverse event ( Cénat et al, 2020 ; Glass et al, 2020 ). During confinement, the relationship between resilience and stress was also analyzed, and it became clear that it was complex ( Ando, 2020 ; Marchini et al, 2020 ).…”

Teaching Mental Health and Well-Being Online in a Crisis: Fostering Love and Self-compassion in Clinical Social Work Education

“…Living in a time of unexpected and rapid change in the context of Australia’s response to the pandemic (Kavoor et al 2020 ) presented a unique opportunity to distill our lived experiences as educators and citizens. At the same time, our here and now temporal, embodied, place-bound, and visceral nature of our lived experiences (Cénat et al 2020 ; Ellis and Flaherty 1992 ), while important, are not readily shareable in the professional literature. Hartman ( 2017 ) recommends narrative case studies to challenge normative phenomena and understandings of lived experience in social work practice and focus on the production of context-dependent knowledge by and with non-dominant cultural groups.…”

Retaining Adolescent and Young Adult Participants in Research During a Pandemic: Best Practices From Two Large-Scale Developmental Neuroimaging Studies (NCANDA and ABCD)

“…To address morale of research assistants, who are responsible for much of the day-to-day scheduling and assessments of participants and parents, consortia held weekly staff meetings to specifically address questions about protocol adaptions as well as staff burnout ( Foster, 2020 ; Restauri and Sheridan, 2020 ). These weekly meetings were essential for building cohesion while working from home, understanding how staff and participants were responding to the pandemic, and modeling self-care by discussing what burnout looks like, how to best address it, and ways to find support from the consortium and other professional and personal sources ( Cénat et al, 2020 ).…”