Editorial

I’m writing this editorial in mid-November, in the throes of the second lockdown in the UK imposed by its flailing government in an attempt to limit the devastating effects of the Coronavirus pandemic. Health services worldwide are overwhelmed by acute admissions of COVID patients, as well as the growing number presenting with more insidious and longer-term direct and indirect effects of the virus on physical and mental health; whilst other public services are struggling with the demands of increasing poverty, homelessness, unemployment and familial conflict. How might a psychoanalytic approach be of benefit to the suffering of so many people?

One psychoanalytically informed method that has been increasingly implemented in the UK since the start of the pandemic has been the provision of Balint groups for front-line health workers who are exposed to a relentless turnover of very sick patients and distressed relatives; who are explicitly or implicitly expected to prioritise the health of their patients before their own; and who in some cases are being forced to make decisions which severely test ethical standards about who receives treatment and who doesn’t in a system at breaking point. Such staff, who seem to be coping so well in such adverse and extreme circumstances, and who have been lauded with public displays of gratitude and admiration, maybe nevertheless experience feelings of anxiety, guilt, anger, resentment, exhaustion and despair that they are too ashamed to admit, but which emerge once the action subsides and their defences collapse.

Balint groups can provide a safe and supportive space in which to acknowledge and explore these emotional responses resulting from the trauma of working in such unprecedented conditions. Medical psychotherapists and other psychoanalytically oriented practitioners are delivering, and receiving increasing requests to deliver, Balint groups for trainee doctors, who have often been temporarily removed from their training posts to