September 10th is World Suicide Prevention Day, hosted by the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP). According to IASP, “the World Health Organization estimates that over 800,000 people die by suicide each year – that’s one person every 40 seconds. Up to 25 times as many again make a suicide attempt.”

As nurses, you face these statistics every day and do your best to decrease these overwhelming numbers. Whether its screening suicide risks in teens, patients with traumatic brain injuries, elderly patients, or cancer patients, you consider the dangers and assess the situations. 

But, what about assessing yourself and your colleagues for these same risks? As health care providers, nurses face stressful days and nights, confront poor patient outcomes, and combat the negative feelings they face to push through and carry on with the work at hand. At times, you may feel you are so busy caring for others that you forget to take a moment and to consider what’s going on inside yourself. 

On NurseTogether.com, there is a sobering blog, Are Your Nursing Colleagues Suffering from Depression?, that outlines some of the signs that indicate clinical depression and suicidal thoughts in nurses. According to the blog, “A study by Welsh found that 35% of a sample of medical surgical nurses had clinical depression. Another study from HealthLeaders Media revealed that one out of five nurses is depressed.” Nurses tend to have larger workloads than other professions, which can lead to both mental and physical stress. “Nurses perform 160 tasks in an eight hour shift with no task lasting longer than 2:45 seconds….Musculo-skeletal disorders are reported in more than 60% of the nursing workforce.” In the Clinical Nurse Specialist: The Journal for Advanced Nursing Practice article, Depression in Hospital-Employed Nurses, “Direct healthcare workers, including nurses, may be more vulnerable to depression as research has shown that work stress precipitates depression in working women and men. Indeed, healthcare workers were ranked third for depressive episodes of all occupations between 2004 and 2006.” Stress on the mind and the body are factors to consider when thinking about clinical depression. 

According to Nightingalechronicles.com, another reason nurses may be more prone to depression and suicidal thoughts than other professions is that when a nurse makes a mistake, it may result in the loss of a patient. “The pressure to ‘Do no harm’ sits heavy on the shoulders of all who take that oath. But what comes after ‘if harm is done’? How do we counsel the person who may have made the mistake?”  Nightingalechronicles.com urges, “When a nurse or medical professional makes a mistake, immediate counseling and crisis intervention should be provided. Nurses should not have to bury themselves in grief, fear, and shame.” 

Other ways to support nurses in trying times are to connect, communicate, and care. IASP promotes these three actions as tools to support those who have encountered suicidal thoughts. You can connect by keeping an eye on yourself and your colleagues and by checking on how they are feeling. If a colleague or yourself is experiencing suicidal thoughts, communication is key. Nurses need to feel it is safe to discuss this topic without fear of being judged or reprimanded. Fellow nurses, policy makers, and managers then need to “care enough about suicide prevention to make it a priority.” Suicidal thoughts should not be swept under the rug or treated as something that can be dealt with later. The risks for nurses are just as real as the risks for the patients they are taking care of.