Peter Costello
Dr Brendan Kelly 
Coping with Coronavirus: How to stay calm and protect your mental health
A psychological toolkit
Dr Brendan Kelly (Merrion Press, eBook €0.99; audio book in preparation)
Dr Kelly, professor of psychiatry at Trinity College, suggested this book to his publisher and within five days he had a text prepared, and a week later they had the eBook edition read to launch, at a remarkably low, almost give-away price.
His admirable aim is to give people under lockdown clear and practical advice on how to stay calm and protect their mental health.
We are all going through this. For the first weeks, coping with the newness of the situation kept us alert. But as time pass we are all affected by the enclosed conditions, fears rise, irritations erupt and strains and stresses appear.
His aim is to aid us all to cope with these. Most GPs are dealing with those who require testing. That alone is a full time job. Other appointments are hard to get. So his advice, couched in basic terms that will make it available to all, will be of immense value.
“The anxiety associated with the coronavirus crisis is real,” he says, “rather than imaginary. The good news is that, just as we are capable of finding sophisticated ways to make ourselves more anxious, we are equally good at finding sophisticated ways to manage our mental health, once we put our minds to it. Anxiety-management techniques help hugely once they are modified to suit the new situation that we face.”
Dr Kelly’s author royalties will be donated to medical charities assisting with the global response to coronavirus. We should all at this time aim to support the caring communities in our society.
