Prioritizing the Mental Health and Well-Being of Healthcare Workers: An Urgent Global Public Health Priority

Learn about NIMH priority areas for research and funding that have the potential to improve mental health care over the short, medium, and long term. As such, pandemic fatigue is a significant concern for pandemic recovery, employee resignation and the sustainability of our healthcare system. Furthermore, challenges following policies during the pandemic were linked to major depression in front-line health workers (Hennein et al. 2021). The ongoing pandemic is having widespread and profound impact on HCPs practising in mental health and acute care settings. But with the duration and mounting evidence showing the psychosocial, physical and emotional harm to patients and HCPs, they wanted to move from emergency crisis mode to a mode of sustainable health delivery that would address high-quality patient care and burnout. The pandemic pay policy was particularly impactful for the allied health participants (such as physiotherapists and social workers).

ABC News special explores mental health crisis among youth amid COVID-19

The COVID Ψ outpatient Survey identified several important mental healthcare challenges during the first three HIPs of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany, drawn from the answers of a regionally diverse sample of psychiatric specialists. Changes in utilization of the outpatient mental healthcare system might have been due to changes in inpatient treatment capacities and utilization, but other factors like fears of infection might have kept patients from on-site consultations, non-essential contacts might have been reduced as an infection protection measure , and due to the enabling of telemedicine consultations. The COVID-19 pandemic was a major challenge for mental healthcare systems. Higher sum scores on the depression (PHQ-9), anxiety (GAD-7), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD PCL-5), stress (PSS), burn-out (UBOS-EE) and insomnia (ISI) surveys indicated decreased mental health.

Depression, anxiety, and stress in relation with age (in years) of the participants Table 5 shows that the prevalence of depression is more in doctors (27.91%) than other supporting staff which includes nurses, wardboys/aayabai, and laboratory technicians (11.60%). Doctors (51.17%) were more in anxiety in Mental health providers during COVID-19 comparison with other supporting staff (84.05%). Furthermore, doctors (27.91%) were more stressed than other supporting staff (8.69%). In our study, males (19.04%) were found to be more stressed than females (15.71%).

• In this new climate, the use and effectiveness of mental health services—including those already available and new or adapted services—should be regularly monitored.
• These changes will likely help to narrow gaps in mental health care seeking for populations that often struggle to find adequate mental health services or therapists with specific identities and specialties (eg, LGBTQ populations, rural populations, racial/ethnic minority groups).
• To inform the context of telemental health, we harmonized the evidence into a visual map by comparing the scope of service (management, preventative, rehabilitative, general) to each domain within the NQF’s telemental health framework, and the design of the study (Figure 3).
• Defined by the WHO as a state of mental, emotional, and social well-being, mental health influences how individuals handle stress, make choices, and relate to others.

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Maintaining structure during isolation is key to patients’ wellbeing, and telehealth gives structure and voice to those coping with the physical and psychosocial consequences of a global health crisis. The prevalence of asymptomatic cases of COVID-19 likely contributes to uncertainty and fear around viral transmission in home environments.40 When fear of health care workers spreading the virus extends to communities, experiences of isolation may be compounded for health care workers and their partners and families. The full effect of COVID-19 on the mental health of individuals working in health care, and specifically within the field of obstetrics and gynecology, is not yet known. Increasing mortality rates related to COVID-19 have exposed health care workers to excessive death and dying.

A focus on accountability based on routine measurement of meaningful and valued outcomes, co-production of service design and evaluation with expansion of health insurance coverage of mental health, and promotion of primary care support and its greater integration with secondary care could further help to sustain mental health care in the aftermath of the pandemic. The frequency of face-to-face, video, and telephone contact with different types of mental health providers; rates of prescription and use of psychiatric medication; rates of emergency mental health treatment and psychiatric hospitalisation; and the proportion of patients with severe mental disorders lost to follow-up should be compared with the corresponding data from before the pandemic. Teams of health-care workers should be encouraged to support and monitor each other, and team leaders should be trained to identify serious issues.73 As stigma related to mental health continues to affect help-seeking in many countries, peer counselling services for clinical staff might also be useful.110 These agencies should mobilise social support networks and work with local communities to help address identified stressors and encourage those in need to seek help from mental health services. After the severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak in Canada and Hong Kong in 2002–04, most adverse psychological consequences of physical distancing and quarantine resolved without the need for specialised mental health care.76, 77, 78, 79 Problems can persist in some people who are particularly affected by protracted infection-containment strategies and recession-related psychological stress. The pandemic could also exacerbate mental health conditions—and further limit scarce access to mental health services—in people living in humanitarian and conflict settings.6 Some positive benefits might also accrue from reductions in social pressure and exposure to chronic psychosocial stressors (eg, commuting, office workplaces,31 bullying32, 33).

It allows service providers to develop plans to prevent and/or manage mental health conditions among staff during and following pandemics. As the need and demand for healthcare has risen due to the pandemic, the pressures placed on those providing care have grown markedly (Khera et al., 2020; Minder & Peltier, 2020; World Health Organization, 2020c). A highly contagious virus, Covid‐19 has spread rapidly between and in countries, offering little opportunity for healthcare services to prepare appropriately (Hamid et al., 2020).