MONTREAL – The mental health of healthcare workers in Quebec was damaged during the first wave of COVID-19. A mobile app launched in May has been able to track their condition step by step for weeks. Their portrait, which has just been drawn up by the researchers, is nuanced: if 15% of caregivers approached the second wave with real psychological distress, the majority of them have adapted, despite adversity, they note.
Montreal researchers unveil preliminary results of their study on Wednesday, which are due to be published soon in a scientific journal.
With these data, “we want to shed light on the debate”, but above all, find solutions to better help healthcare workers, said in an interview with Dr Nicolas Bergeron, psychiatrist and researcher at the Center hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal (CHUM). .
He carried out this work with a team, including Steve Geoffrion, a researcher at the Research Center of the Montreal Mental Health University Institute, which notably developed the mobile application – first created for a project on distress. psychological firefighters, then adapted for medical personnel.
“The mental health of healthcare workers has always been a taboo. There is this culture that you have to be strong to do this job, and not to complain, ”explains Mr. Geoffrion, who hopes that their work will shed light on what they are experiencing:“ a worker of health can also be in distress and be tired ”.
The mobile application allowed them to complete a questionnaire every week. It also had another use: to help these workers to monitor their mental health to get through the crisis, by becoming aware of what they were going through.
After a day in an emergency room, a nurse could thus answer a series of questions relating to her state of stress, her exposure to critical events as well as the social support she received.
This gave a unique – valuable, they say – dimension to the research project: unlike several studies on the mental health of caregivers that assess it at a specific point in time, theirs spanned 17 weeks – between May and September – with the help of nearly 400 participants occupying various types of jobs, in different workplaces, including hospitals and CHSLDs.
These workers have experienced fear, the questioning of their way of working, and very difficult situations, underlined Dr. Bergeron.
Despite this, “85% of the healthcare workers followed managed to overcome the stressful experiences of the first wave. They ended up adapting ”.
But beware, he says: that does not mean that they have not experienced anything difficult and that they have not felt distress, adds Dr Bergeron immediately. Some lived it for several weeks, but eventually got over it. Distress, “it evolves and can change favorably,” he says.
Moreover, in June, it was about a third of the participants who displayed psychological distress with reactions of post-traumatic stress, anxiety and depression, which was maintained between two and four weeks, gave in example M. Geoffrion.
Moreover, 15% of these health workers had to face the second wave by being already in a situation of mental distress. A “fairly significant” percentage, which deserves “all our attention, to prevent it from becoming chronic”.
For these researchers, these preliminary results have been rather encouraging – and demonstrate the great resilience of these healthcare workers.
They also wish to underline certain observations: living in distress in a context as stressful and unusual as the health crisis is “normal and expected”. This distress is not synonymous with a mental disorder, nor a sign that workers who experience it are bound to develop one.
Another interesting result is that the “trajectories” of these caregivers have not been identical, they report: for some, the levels of distress remained high, others began their period of distress at the end of the period. was rather at the very beginning of the pandemic and for another group it became more acute in September. Why? These are excellent questions that they will also explore with the rest of their work and their second phase of research which will focus on the second wave.
They are also interested in what type of job was more at risk and which situations left more marks.
Why did some caregivers experience this intense period more difficult than others? Perhaps they did not have the required support, argues Mr. Geoffrion, who specifies that the whole issue of support is crucial. It can also be provided by work colleagues, adds Dr Bergeron, and the work environment must also promote their well-being, through measures that promote rest and recognition, among other things.
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