Alterations in the Experience of Time, Space, and Intersubjectivity and the Interaction with Pre-Existent Psychopathology during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic and the measures to protect the physically vulnerable may disproportionately affect people with mental health vulnerabilities, who receive psychotherapeutic inpatient treatment, as many of these measures impact the (inter)subjective space crucial to psychotherapy.

Objective: We investigate how people with pre-existing mental health conditions and healthcare professionals experienced changes linked to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: During the first COVID-19 outbreak and lockdown in spring 2020, we conducted semi-structured interviews with patients and healthcare professionals at a clinic for psychosomatic medicine in Germany and analyzed them following the principles of descriptive phenomenology focusing on social interactions, intersubjectivity, and the therapeutic space.