PONE-D-20-05925

Study of the mental health status of medical personnel dealing with new coronavirus pneumonia

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Sun,

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Stephan Doering, M.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Partly

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The manuscript investigates an interesting topic that is becoming a challenging issue worldwide. The design limitations (lack of longitudinal design) could be tolerate due to the urge to disseminate research on the COVID19 pandemic. However, some modifications are requested to make the text more readable and some theoretical and background pitfalls should be addressed.

The manuscript focuses on mental health status, and the main message is that mental health problems are a consequence of the emergency condition, and psychological strain linked to the fear of the disease plays a central role. However, more international references and literature on occupational stress, burnout and psychology of emergencies should be implemented in the introduction and in the discussion.

Could you insert references of the Chinese adaptation of the SCL 90?

Please explain in the text what does the hospital class means.

Could you provide in table 2 the number or the percentage of staff members who scored higher than the national norm cut off for each scl90 subscale and for the total score? This would give the reader a synthetic idea of the mental health status of the personnel.

Regression analysis. Could you move the description of the stepwise model in the method paragraph, including table 3? You may keep the model results, including table 4, in the results section. This would make the results clearer and more readable.

Reviewer #2: Interesting paper. Research subjects and methods are correct.

Discussion must be improved. These papers can be intersting and related with your paper:

Montemurro N.

The emotional impact of COVID-19: from medical staff to common people.

Brain Behav Immun. 2020 Mar 30. pii: S0889-1591(20)30411-6. doi: 10.1016/j.bbi.2020.03.032. [Epub ahead of print]

Li Z, Ge J, Yang M et al.

Vicarious traumatization in the general public, members, and non-members of medical teams aiding in COVID-19 control.

Brain Behav Immun. 2020 Mar 10. pii: S0889-1591(20)30309-3. doi: 10.1016/j.bbi.2020.03.007. [Epub ahead of print]

Huang J, Liu F, Teng Z et al.

Care for the psychological status of frontline medical staff fighting against COVID-19.

Clin Infect Dis. 2020 Apr 3. pii: ciaa385. doi: 10.1093/cid/ciaa385. [Epub ahead of print]

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Filippo Rapisarda

Reviewer #2: No

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Study of the mental health status of medical personnel dealing with new coronavirus pneumonia

PONE-D-20-05925R1

Dear Dr. Sun,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it complies with all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you will receive an e-mail containing information on the amendments required prior to publication. When all required modifications have been addressed, you will receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will proceed to our production department and be scheduled for publication.

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With kind regards,

Stephan Doering, M.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #2: This paper showed the relationship between personality traits and mental health conditions of medical personnel to provide a basis and reference for the implementation of targeted education on mental health. Interesting paper. Authors answered to all comments. Well done!

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #2: No