Healthcare Workers Continue To Deal With PTSD A Whole Year After Pandemic Outbreaks, Claims Study

Healthcare system across the world were pushed to the brink after the coronavirus outbreak. Doctors, nurses and other medical workers faced a new set of challenges. One such challenge frontline workers are having to deal with is PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder.

Almost a quarter of healthcare workers (23.4 per cent) experienced PTSD symptoms during the most acute phase of the previous pandemic outbreaks. 11.9 per cent of frontline workers are experiencing symptoms almost a year on, new research has revealed.

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According to researchers from the University of East Anglia (UEA) in the UK, mental health problems such as PTSD, anxiety and depression are common among healthcare staff during and immediately after pandemics.

¡°Nurses, doctors, allied health professionals and all support staff based in hospitals where patients with COVID-19 are treated are facing considerable pressure over a sustained period,¡± said Professor Richard Meiser-Stedman from UEA's Norwich Medical School.

Researchers investigated how treating patients in the past pandemics such as SARS and MERS affected the mental health of the frontline staff.

They looked at data about elevated levels of mental distress and found that more than a third of health workers (34.1 per cent) experienced symptoms such as anxiety or depression during the acute phase, dropping to 17.9 per cent after six months.

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This figure, however, increased again to 29.3 per cent after 12 months or longer.

The team hoped that their work would help highlight the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic could be having on the mental health of doctors and nurses around the world.

¡°In addition to the challenge of treating a large volume of severely unwell patients, frontline staff also have to contend with threats to their own physical health through infection, particularly as they have had to face shortages of essential personal protective equipment,¡± Meiser-Stedman said.

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Researchers have also determined that healthcare workers will significantly face a 'tsunami' of mental health issues after the pandemic.

¡°We wanted to examine this by looking closely at the existing data from previous pandemics to better understand the potential impact of COVID-19,¡± the authors wrote. They estimated the prevalence of common mental health disorders in healthcare workers based in pandemic-affected hospitals.

They looked at 19 studies which included data predominantly from the SARS outbreak in Asia and Canada and which tended to focus on the acute stage of the pandemic ¡ª during and up to around six weeks after the pandemic.