Impacts of Mental Health and Challenges Faced by Healthcare Workers in UK

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
LITERATURE REVIEW.....................................................................................................................3
Theme 1: Impacts of mental health and challenges faced by healthcare workers.......................3
Theme 2: Causes of poor nurse mental health in UK..................................................................3
Theme 3: Roles of managers to support staff with poor mental health.....................................10
REFERENCES...................................................................................................................................15

LITERATURE REVIEW
Theme 1: Impacts of mental health and challenges faced by healthcare workers
According to the view of Walton, Murray and Christian, (2020), there are various kinds
of mental health challenges that are faced by healthcare workers. Many times, due to extreme
psychological distress healthcare workers, mental health conditions of workers are impacted. this
psychological distress can make it challenging for healthcare workers to work with mental peace.
Sometimes this distress led healthcare workers towards depression, experience negative thoughts
about themselves or sometimes about others as well. Walton, Murray and Christian, (2020),
further explains that some of the most common factors because of which mental health
challenges for healthcare workers’ increases are: undesirable working condition, lower income
and high working hours, continuous working under stressful work conditions and lack of
appropriate resources. Current Pandemic situation of Covid-19 is one of the main factors that can
be used to explain different kinds of mental health challenges faced by healthcare workers, this is
because these workers are required to work under stressful coronavirus situation because of
which they are always in stress, distress, tension etc.
According to Santarone, McKenney and Elkbuli, (2020) Stress, tension, isolation, and
depression are some most important mental health challenges that are being faced by healthcare
workers. Like continuously working in stressful situations like handing complicated cases etc.
results in mental health disturbance. Healthcare workers need to remain available for 24*7 and
should be prepared for a kind of emergency, due to this, they suffer tension and sometimes only
because of this long working hours they feel depressed, and they fail to maintain a balance
between their work and family life. Many times, this routine results in worker feeling lonely or
isolated. Most of these mental health challenges are faced by healthcare workers who work in
either ICU or in emergency department. Due to this it becomes important to identify ways in
which these mental health challenges faced by healthcare workers can be reduced.
Theme 2: Causes of poor nurse mental health in UK
Regarding mental health in healthcare sector, it can be said that in the UK mental health
problems like anxiety, depression is high among nurses. This sector and managers are striving
hard for decreasing mental health problems because it affects patients’ overall health. Some

authors stated numbers of reasons or causing factors of mental health problems among nurses,
and they said that before developing strategies for decreasing poor mental health problems, it is
important to identify all causing factors. So, in this regard, Keersand et.al. (2018) stated that
excessive work load and increasing staff turnover rate is one of the main reason. Due to staff
turnover rate, workload increases on rest of workers and due to ageing population; numbers of
patients’rate areincreasing. Nurses find problems in dealing with numbers of patients during
working hours. Due to lack of safety and increasing rate of disease and patients’ hospital stay
rate, many workers or nurses leave organization that increases pressure on rest of workers.
Nurses find problems in maintaining a balance between their personal and professional life that
makes them more frustrated. It is also found that due to increasing workload, nurses do not get
time to have their lunch and dinner, they must work extra hours and long working hours. Due to
this longer working hours and not getting leave leads mental health problems like stress,
frustration, and depression. In addition, Maben and Bridges, (2020) supported above view and
stated that continuous working under stressful work conditions lead mental health problem. One
of the best examples of working under stressful and unsafe working environment is Covid-19. At
the time of pandemic, all people were asked to stay home to stay safe and they were allowed to
work from home. But there were few professions in which people were not allowed to do as like
others. Public services like dispensary, health and social care were the main sector. Due to
increasing case or numbers of positive Covid-19, it became difficult for nurses to deal. They
were bound to work under unsafe working environment, and they were afraid of getting affected
from Covid-19. This fear and wearing PPE kit all the time made them frustrated. So, as per this
view, it can clearly be said that health and social care or doctors, nurses are among those who
cannot live on off duty.
Luo et.al. (2020) Contradictedand said that undesirable working condition and lack of
availability of resources is one of the main causing factors of increasing mental health problems
among nurses. There are some hospitals and health and social care organizations where nurses
find problems in providing qualitative or better services to patients. Due to unavailability or lack
of appropriate resources, nurses cannot deliver services that they needed to deliver or provide. It
increases delay in treatment process and increase patients stay rate. Sometimes patients also
become aggressive due to delay in treatment process, and they blame nurses for this. It increases
frustration and spoil their mood. They find difficulties in performing their roles with