11 Jul How COVID-19 Changed Public Attitudes Toward Mental Health Care
Mental Health Notice: If you are experiencing significant stress, anxiety, or low mood, please speak with a qualified healthcare professional. You can contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988 (24/7), or the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741. In a life-threatening situation, call 911.
The COVID-19 pandemic didn't just come and go. It disrupted our way of life, and its impact on mental health care can still be felt. The pandemic changed how people viewed stress, anxiety, and emotional support. Before 2020, you probably didn't like discussing your mental health issues for fear of being judged. Most people believed they should handle mental health issues alone.
Lockdowns, uncertainty, grief, and isolation made those struggles harder to ignore. As millions faced similar challenges, mental health became a public conversation rather than a private concern. In this article, we'll explain how the pandemic made mental health care more acceptable and why demand has remained strong.
[caption id="attachment_74956" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Photo by Alex Green on Pexels[/caption]
Compassion fatigue is when you are exposed to suffering, trauma, or similar negative emotional states in others so much that you become desensitized and indifferent to it. You may also hear it referred to as secondary trauma or vicarious trauma, with many arguing that it’s an inevitable response.
Whichever name you use, it’s a condition in which you feel physically and psychologically exhausted, resulting in a diminished capacity for empathy. This, in turn, has a negative impact on your ability to do your job as a nurse.
Sadly, compassion fatigue is not uncommon in the healthcare field, which is why it’s so important to be alert to the symptoms and understand how to respond when they arise.
Dr. McPeek Hinz[/caption]
Eugenia McPeek Hinz MD MS FAMIA
Associate CMIO - DHTS
Duke University Health System
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Clinician burnout rates have hovered around 50% for much of the past decade. Burnout is a significant concern in healthcare for its effects on care givers and associated downstream adverse implications on patient care for quality and safety. The ubiquitous presence of Electronic Health Records (EHR) along with the increased clerical components and after hours use has been a significant concern for contributing to provider burnout. 
Dr. Perumalswami[/caption]
Chithra R. Perumalswami, MD, MSc
Research Fellow
Center for Bioethics & Social Sciences in Medicine
University of Michigan
[caption id="attachment_51839" align="alignleft" width="133"]
Dr. Gardner[/caption]
Rebekah L Gardner MD
Associate Professor of Medicine
Warren Alpert Medical School
Brown University
Providence, Rhode Island
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Burnout profoundly affects physicians, their patients, and the health care system.The role of technology in physician burnout, specifically health information technology (HIT), is not as well characterized as some of the other factors. We sought to understand how stress related to HIT use predicts burnout among physicians.
Our main findings are that 70% of electronic health record (EHR) users reported HIT-related stress, with the highest prevalence in primary care-oriented specialties. We found that experiencing HIT-related stress independently predicted burnout in these physicians, even accounting for other characteristics like age, gender, and practice type. In particular, those with time pressures for documentation or those doing excessive “work after work” on their EHR at home had approximately twice the odds of burnout compared to physicians without these challenges. We found that physicians in different specialties had different rates of stress and burnout.
