MENTAL HEALTH: THE CRISIS AROUND US
This important issue of Nursing Administration Quarterly (NAQ) focuses on mental health and the crisis around us. Contributing authors write about behavioral health challenges, the pandemic, burnout, wellness, workplace violence, nurse suicide, health disparities, and more. Bernadette Melnyk and colleagues conducted a study on wellness and shorter shift length. Findings concluded that nurses who worked longer shifts had poorer health outcomes. They also found that of the 264 nurses who participated, more than 50% had worsening mental/physical health relating to the pandemic.
As nurse leaders, we can use these data to help invest in creating supportive wellness cultures. Access to mental health resources is critical for nurses and health care professionals, and we can use the evidence to support these programs. Cunningham and Pfieffer write about posttraumatic growth and resiliency. They suggest the use of the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory to guide nurse leaders as they implement resiliency interventions for professional nurses. Resiliency, being able to bounce back after an adverse event, is a critical characteristic for nurses and health care workers.
The American Academy of Nursing identifies mental health as an urgent public health concern. Policies aimed at the delivery of high-quality mental/behavioral health and the reduction of at-risk substance use should be implemented as an essential component of public health.1 During the pandemic, the well-being of nurses and health care professionals has been highlighted by many organizations. Nationally, there is an increased awareness of mental health because of the stress of the pandemic. In 1974, psychologist Herbert Freudenberger2 coined the term "burnout." He described burnout as having physical symptoms such as exhaustion, fatigue, frequent headaches and gastrointestinal disorders, sleeplessness, and shortness of breath. Shapiro and colleagues share data from an 11-hospital study focused on young nurses and burnout. Those nurses younger than 30 years were more apt to burnout than their older nurse colleagues. What does this mean for the future of nursing? Creating safe, healthy work environments remains important for the well-being and retention of our staff.
If you search for mental health resources online, you will find hundreds of Web sites through professional associations, hospitals, schools, and health systems focused on helping their constituents, specifically for burnout, depression, and suicide prevention. In the first national study of its size, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and UC San Diego Health, Department of Nursing, have found that male and female nurses are at a higher risk of suicide than the general population.3 Results of the longitudinal study were published in the February 3, 2020, online edition of WORLDviews on Evidence Based-Nursing. In this issue of NAQ, authors Choflet and colleagues describe evidence-based strategies that nurse administrators can use to intervene at various levels to reduce nurse suicide. They conclude that nurse administrators have an obligation to provide proactive, meaningful interventions to reduce the risk of death by suicide among nurses. There are many other meaningful articles in this issue.
As I write this editorial, we are in the fourth surge of COVID-19 and the Delta variant is rampant in some areas of California. We are battling short-staffed hospitals, lack of traveling nurses to fill the gap, full intensive care units (ICUs) with admitted patients held in the emergency departments due to the lack of ICU beds, and the staff are exhausted. No longer being a frontline worker, I can only imagine what their days look like and kept wondering why I felt burnt out while I was not on the front lines. How could my feelings compare with the frontline workers and what they are going through? I was very intrigued to read an article in The New York Times4 published in April 2021 by Adam Grant that really resonated with me. The title of his article is: "There's a Name for the Blah You're Feeling: It's Called Languishing: The Neglected Middle Child of Mental Health Can Dull Your Motivation and Focus-and It May be the Dominant Emotion of 2021." Languishing is defined as the sense of stagnation and emptiness, a feeling many of us have had for the past (almost) 2 years, a feeling of blah-ness. I now know the word that describes how I am feeling: languished. Grant says that we still live in a world that normalizes physical health challenges but stigmatizes mental health challenges. We need to continue to provide programs and services to help our staff and ourselves. As nurse leaders, we can help change the stigma of mental health.
I am eager to see people in person, attend a conference, travel, and, frankly, just get out of the house. Thank you for all you do for nursing, our patients, and our communities.
-KT Waxman, DNP, MBA, RN, CNL, CHSE, CENP, FSSH, FAONL, FAAN
Editor-in-Chief
Nursing Administration Quarterly
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