Below you can see studies, data or specialists opinion suggesting the huge health care workers crisis due to covid-19 pandemic indirect toxic stress and mental health effects
Results: Current alcohol abuse/dependence symptom counts 3 years after the outbreak were positively associated with having been quarantined, or worked in high-risk locations such as SARS wards, during the outbreak. However, having had family members or friends contract, SARS was not related to alcohol abuse/dependence symptom count. Symptoms of PTS and of depression, and having used drinking as a coping method, were also significantly associated with increased alcohol abuse/dependence symptoms. The relationship between outbreak exposure and alcohol abuse/dependence symptom count remained significant even when sociodemographic and other factors were controlled for. When the intrusion, avoidance and hyperarousal PTS symptom clusters were entered into the model, hyperarousal was found to be significantly associated with alcohol abuse/dependence symptoms. Conclusions: Exposure to an outbreak of a severe infectious disease can, like other disaster exposures, lead not only to PTSD but also to other psychiatric conditions, such as alcohol abuse/dependence. The findings will help policy makers and health professionals to better prepare for potential outbreaks of diseases such as SARS or avian flu.
Date: 2008
Source: https://academic.oup.com/alcalc/article/43/6/706/250093
A survey of 1,563 health care professionals (HCPs) in China found that 73% were unusually stressed, 51% were depressed, 45% anxious, and 36% had insomnia10. Wuhan authorities declared that deterioration in HCPs’ mental health will be considered as “work-related injuries”.
Date: Feb. 2020
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7098037/
In a recent KFF poll, about half (51%) of people in households with a health care worker said worry and stress about coronavirus has had a negative impact on their mental health, which is statistically similar to the 44% of people experiencing a negative impact who do not live in households with a health care worker.11A recent study examined the mental health outcomes of health care providers working in China during the coronavirus outbreak, finding that providers reported feelings of depression, anxiety, and overall psychological burden. This experience was particularly acute among nurses, women, and providers directly involved in diagnosing and treating patients with COVID-19.
Date: 21 Apr 2020
Source: https://www.kff.org/health-reform/report/kff-health-tracking-poll-early-april-2020/
Researchers at Peking University in Beijing wrote in a February correspondence in The Lancet, a prestigious medical journal, that the mental health disorders inflicted on those on the front lines of the crisis could “exceed the consequences” of the virus itself.
The challenges and stress they experience could trigger common mental disorders, including anxiety and depressive disorders, and posttraumatic stress disorder, which in turn could result in hazards that exceed the consequences of the 2019-nCoV epidemic itself.
Date: Feb. 2020
Source: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30309-3/fulltext
Suicides among people in the front lines raise alarm of what may come if we do not prepare. It seems that mental health workers need to face situations they would have never imagined. Seeing people die alone and not being able to confort them due to lack of time or protective equipment, being afraid they or their dear ones will catch the disease, so much work they had to do in this period, even choosing who to let die …
“Failing to prepare properly for the mental health aftermath of the pandemic would be another structural betrayal of frontline health care workers, exposing them to needless suffering and possibly death. We must choose to be ready.”
Wendy Dean is a psychiatrist and president and cofounder, with Simon G. Talbot, of the nonprofit organization Moral Injury of Healthcare
The Psychological Impact of the SARS Epidemic on Hospital Employees in China: Exposure, Risk Perception, and Altruistic Acceptance of Risk
About 10% of the respondents had experienced high levels of posttraumatic stress (PTS) symptoms since the SARS outbreak. Respondents who had been quarantined, or worked in high-risk locations such as SARS wards, or had friends or close relatives who contracted SARS, were 2 to 3 times more likely to have high PTS symptom levels, than those without these exposures. Respondents’ perceptions of SARS-related risks were significantly positively associated with PTS symptom levels and partially mediated the effects of exposure. Altruistic acceptance of work-related risks was negatively related to PTS levels.
Conclusions:
The psychological impact of stressful events related to an infectious disease outbreak may be mediated by peoples’ perceptions of those events; altruism may help to protect some health care workers against these negative impacts.
Date: 2009
Source: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/070674370905400504
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