Psycho-emotional stress (PES) is a significant risk factor (RF) for the Russian population. It is necessary to search for scientific approaches to improve PES prevention, including patient routing in the current primary health care (PHC) system settings for the adult population.
OBJECTIVE
To review expert opinions and identify promising areas of medical prevention of psycho-emotional stress in the adult population of the Russian Federation within current primary health care settings.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
The online questionnaire was conducted from April 16 to April 25, 2025, using the author’s questionnaire to assess the expert opinion of the Chief Consultants in medical prevention, heads of public health and medical prevention centers, and chief doctors of medical organizations of 37 constituent entities of the Russian Federation (n=133). Statistical analysis was performed using the R 4.2 environment.
RESULTS
The experts confirmed the importance of PES as an RF of chronic non-communicable diseases (CNCDs) and identified ways of routing the adult population with PES, including the integration of PES screening (questionnaire method) into the clinical examination, preventive counseling, and, if necessary, consultation with a medical psychologist/psychotherapist of medical organizations providing PHC for persons with high PES levels. The prospects of interaction between the departments (offices) of medical prevention, health centers, and offices of medical and psychological counseling are described. Low values of expert assessment regarding the full-time staffing of psychotherapists and/or medical psychologists of health centers (4.37±3.17 points), community awareness (5.84±2.43 points), and awareness of nursing staff and primary health care doctors (6.12±2.46 points) on the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of PES as an RF for CNCD were revealed.
CONCLUSION
The results of the study showed the importance of psycho-emotional stress as a risk factor for chronic non-communicable diseases and the need to identify and implement potential medical and organizational measures to prevent it in modern primary health care settings.
