COVID‐19's crushing mental health toll on health care workers

Abstract

[...]Dr. Wei says, US military personnel embedded in New York City's hospitals to assist with the clinical care told hospital staff, “this is the closest to combat that we've seen in a civilian setting.” Because families cannot be at a dying patient's bedside, nurses and nursing assistants often have been called on to be conduits for video calls and emotional support. Through the New York City Office of Emergency Management, for example, the Department of Defense shared its own combat stress management and resilience programs, and a multiagency collaboration is adapting them to the civilian health care system across the city. Dr. Gold says improving access to telemental health services by reducing some regulatory barriers could help to magnify limited resources, whereas Dr. Perlis cites community mental health centers as other assets in helping to plug holes in the nation's “broken” mental health system.