Frontline stories: mental health of health care workers in the COVID-19 pandemic
A short film produced by the WHO Regional Office for Europe shows health care workers talking about the mental health and well-being challenges they have been facing while caring for patients during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Beyond the physical impact of the pandemic on societies worldwide, studies are warning of the negative effects on people’s mental health. The main psychological consequences to date appear to be elevated levels of stress or anxiety, loneliness, insomnia, and depression.
COVID’s mental health toll
Working on the frontline of the pandemic, care and health workers especially face a wide range of psychological stressors, which may cause both long-lasting effects to the well-being and mental health of workers and affect the quality and safety of the care they provide.
A call for increased protection of health and care workers’ mental health and well-being is one of the focal points of the WHO’s current International Year of Health and Care Workers. Having been exposed to extreme working conditions for the past year, health and care workers are particularly vulnerable to a deterioration in their physical and mental health. They are at risk of experiencing tremendous psychological pressure because of accumulated stress, physical exhaustion, stigma and fear of infecting themselves or their loved ones.
Speaking out on mental health
In the film, health care workers from across the Region – in North Macedonia, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland – describe the immense mental, physical and social impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their personal and professional lives. They recount how services that became overwhelmed forced them to make difficult decisions to ensure patient care and staff safety. They share their pain over losing patients and emphasize the importance of supporting one another and how the demands of their jobs have taken a toll on their mental health and well-being, resulting in feelings of guilt, worry and stress, insomnia, nightmares, stigma and discrimination.
The film also presents available evidence-informed practices, tools and technologies for mitigating the consequences of stress and bolstering psychological resilience and recovery among health care workers. Strategies include expanding access to psychological interventions, targeted digital health innovations, and the importance of peer support. The film further highlights the need for long-term solutions to address health and well-being support for health care workers.
Complementing the video of personal testimonies, 2 brief guided relaxation exercises have been recorded with a clinical psychologist in the Netherlands.
