When healthcare professionals face mental health challenges

Stress is an inevitable aspect of life, serving as a driving force for meeting deadlines, fostering growth, challenging our abilities and cultivating resilience. However, it’s important to recognise when stress transforms into distress.

Amidst the rising global prevalence of mental health conditions, healthcare professionals find themselves particularly susceptible. However, they are more likely to endure silently rather than seek help for symptoms related to anxiety, depression, stress, and burnout.

A recent study found that more than 58% of emergency doctors and 50% of nurses suffer from burnout with a mere 9% utilise intervention programmes.

This hesitancy to seek assistance can be attributed to time constraints and the demanding nature of their schedules. However it’s more likely stigma and fear that drives the silence. Medical professionals often fear being seen as incompetent, weak and unfit to do their jobs due to the (unfound) expectations that healthcare workers should be more resilient and better equipped than the general public to deal with work stress and manage their mental health.

READ: Are you surviving or thriving?

Duty of care

Reaching out is not a sign of weakness or incompetence. Taking care of oneself should be priority. There is a reason why flight attendants remind us to put on our oxygen mask first, before assisting fellow passengers.

“The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.”

―?M. Scott Peck

Sleep deprivation, anxiety, depression, or physical unwellness can impair decision-making and compromise the ability to provide safe and effective care to patients. Resilience, on the other hand, enhances cognitive presence and efficacy in diagnostic and caregiving roles.

?It starts with you

Prevention includes a wide range of activities known as interventions aimed at reducing risks or threats to health.

Here are my top tips for building resilience:

Be optimistic. Optimism is a future-oriented attitude, involving hope and confidence that things will turn out well. Positive emotions reduce physiological arousal and broaden our visual focus, our thoughts, and our behaviour. Our thinking becomes more creative, inclusive, flexible, and integrative

Face your fear. Enhanced consolidation and fear conditioning is necessary for survival.

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”

― Nelson Mandela

Have moral courage. Know your values and have the courage to do the right thing.

Have faith. In a meta-analysis of 42 studies those who actively practiced a religious faith lived slightly longer than those who did not.

Get social support. The effect of social support on life expectancy may be as strong as the effects of obesity, cigarette smoking, hypertension, or level of physical activity. Make sure to invest in healthy friendships where you engage in quality conversations through physically catching up with those close to you.

Find role models. Engage in formal mentorship programs, invest in private coaching or reach out to someone in your social network.

Train diligently, sleep regularly. ?These are the easiest of them all. Chronic sleep deprivation is bad for you. Aim for at least 6 hours per night (ideally 7-9). Exercise 5 times a week for at least 30 minute.

Watch: The importance of sleep

Never stop learning. This is not always about formal qualifications but rather enriching your mind with new experiences, learning a new language, traveling or starting a new hobby.

READ: Grow your mindset

By prioritising yourself and your health, you will build resilience and take better care of your patients. Remember there is no bravery in managing ill and traumatised patients whilst you are struggling with your own.