On November 17, 2019, COVID-19 was detected for the first time in Wuhan, China. The first article that was accepted for publication in this special issue reports that, as of April 26, 2020, there were 2,804,796 confirmed cases worldwide (899,281 in the US) and 193,710 deaths worldwide (38,509 in the US). By the time this special issue is going to press, over 21 million cases have been documented worldwide (over 5 million in the US), and over 761 thousand people have lost their lives (over 167 thousand in the US). This persistent propagation of the COVID-19 infections and fatalities makes it clear that the end of the crisis is not yet in sight. The goal of this special issue is to document how our discipline responded during this tragic period in human history, and, even more importantly, to rapidly disseminate information about this response, so as to facilitate transition from “business as usual” to new models of care in the context of COVID-19.
This special issue is organized into three section: (1) professional surveys, (2) teleneuropsychology (TeleNP), and (3) neuropsychological sequelae of COVID-19. The first section is comprised of three survey articles that document the initial impact of COVID-19 on clinical practice and clinical training, as well as the early adaptations the profession was making. Undoubtedly, the survey results reported in these articles no longer reflect where the profession is today, as changes in the early days of the pandemic were so rapid that submitted articles needed to be updated even during the course of the peer-review process. As such, these professional surveys are intended primarily as a documentation of where we were in the early spring of 2020, as well as to serve as a baseline against which to compare future research.
The second section of this special issue is comprised of seven article that focus on various aspects of TeleNP. Arguably, transition to TeleNP represented the most pressing challenge in the early days of the pandemic, requiring that clinicians familiarize themselves with available methods and instruments, as well as with a variety of practical, technological, and ethical issues. Thus, this section opens with the statement from the InterOrganizational practice committee (IOPC), offering guidance and recommendations for responsible implementation of TeleNP care. The IOPC statement is followed by five articles that offer practical, user-friendly insights into how transitioning to TeleNP was handled across four different clinical settings. This section closes with a review article that examines the utility of various TeleNP instruments for use with older adults.
While in the early days of the crisis the focus was on rapid transitioning to new practice models, in the wake of the crisis clinical neuropsychology will undoubtedly encounter a new type of a patient: the COVID-19 survivor. Thus, the last section of this special issue is comprised of three review articles, each reviewing different mechanisms of expected COVID-19 sequelae. Specifically, articles in this section review what is known about the impact of other similar viruses on the central nervous system, the impact of chronic pulmonary disease on the brain and on cognition, and the stress-related psychiatric sequelae that are likely to emerge in the aftermath of COVID-19 treatment.
I wish to close this brief introduction by sharing how impressed I have been by the tremendous effort our field put forth to make rapid dissemination of the early COVID-19 experiences possible. A heart-felt thank you goes to both authors and reviewers who turned manuscripts around with an unprecedented speed. I also want to express my gratitude to Ailsa Marks, the TCN managing editor, whose support was key in making the rapid publication of this special issue possible. Lastly, I want to acknowledge that we received far more submissions than we could fit into this special issue; thus, readers can expect a second installment of COVID-19 articles by mid-2021.
Editor-in-Chief
Department of Psychology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA
[email protected]