COVID-19 | Mental Health | Medicine
The Mental Health Pandemic Among COVID-19 Healthcare Workers
A quarter of healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic suffer depression and anxiety, and over half are at risk for developing these and other mental health problems.
Jeff Notar is an intensive care unit nurse at St. Patrick Hospital in Missoula, Montana. “There’s a higher degree of burnout now than there’s ever been,” he says in an interview with the Missoulian.
“Dealing with the ICU, we’re seeing the worst responders to the virus out of all patients,” explains Notar. “If that’s all you see, then you think ‘if I get this, that’s going to happen to me.’ Am I going to end up on a ventilator? My mental health is tenuous. A lot of us are feeling tenuous.”
To get through a day you have to expend two times the units of work. Some days it’s three or four units of work. But we’re getting the same time off, the same amount of vacation, the same amount of sick pay. The total amount of work is higher and the stress is higher. And I would say the repercussions for failure are higher, too. Then you want to throw in the interaction with family members of…
