In the Chart of Humanities, we collect the voices of experts from the Humanities for Health who told us about their guiding pillars at the time of COVID-19. We report here the testimony of Susana Magalhães, Research Integrity Officer at Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde – i3S (Universidade do Porto).
Domestic context – Biological model
This is the right time to listen to your body and do what you haven’t been able to do for the last months/years. Give you body time to exercise, eat well, get hydrated. Eating healthy food is crucial these days, because anxiety and sadness may make you crave for confort food. It is not a problem to do it once in a while, but generally you need to take care of your immune system by eating healthy food.
Psychological model
Keep your mind busy with what gives you opportunities to distract from the news; don’t feel pressured to follow a prescription of what to do. This chart is a map for you to navigate and build your own path.
In order to avoid catastrophic scenarios, think about your past life and see how the present situation, in spite of being too serious and threatening, will be overcome, like so many other tragic situations have been. Contextualize this pandemic as temporary and happening once in a lifetime (many scientists believe more pandemics will come up, but no in the same lifetime of one generation)
Social model
Use your imagination and creativity to surprise your relatives and friends once in a while and always keep in touch with the ones you love: this is the time to make a phone call to a dear friend whom you haven’t talked for a while.
This is the right time for virtual hugs, but also for rethinking how you should contact with others while this virus is spreading: safe social contact means protecting you and others.
Spiritual model
Since we have to be at home, this could be an opportunity for you to think about YOU: without regretful thoughts or self –blaming, you can rethink your work/private life balance; your leisure time; your relationships; your needs and plans.
If this virus has made the whole world stop moving so fast, you can also slow down and give yourself the opportunity to BE and not only to DO things.