A third of Canadian nurses show symptoms of depression and nearly a quarter have symptoms of PTSD, according to a new national study — led by a Regina team — examining the mental health of nurses.
The findings, which Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions (CFNU) president Linda Silas called “quite disturbing,” showed that rates of mental illness among nurses were just as high as in public service personnel like police and paramedics.
“Getting those numbers was hard,” said Silas. “In some areas it’s worse than the public safety personnel.”
The study was conducted by University of Regina researchers Andrea Stelnicki and Nicholas Carleton in collaboration with the CFNU, and the study’s report was released Tuesday.
More than 7,300 nurses across the country were surveyed in 2019, so the results do not reflect any changes in nurses’ mental health due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Carleton, a psychology professor at the U of R and scientific director for the Canadian Institute for Public Safety Research and Treatment (CIPSRT), presented the findings of the study via a Facebook Live presentation together with Stelnicki and Silas.
The study found that 36 per cent of nurses who took the survey had symptoms of depression, 23 per cent of PTSD and 26 per cent of Generalized Anxiety Disorder. A similar study Carleton did in 2017 showed 26 per cent of public service personnel had symptoms of depression, 23 per cent of PTSD and 19 per cent of Generalized Anxiety Disorder.
Nurses’ rates of burnout are also high, with 63 per cent of nurses experiencing some burnout and 29 per cent experiencing clinical burnout, according to the study.
The data also showed more nurses than other frontline workers exhibit suicidal behaviours, with 33 per cent of nurses saying at some point in their life they have thought about suicide, 17 per cent saying they have planned to die by suicide and eight per cent saying they have attempted suicide.
“We’ve been hearing anecdotally from nurses … how bad things have really been for them, but I think in some aspects we were a little bit surprised to see particularly how high the rates of depression and anxiety and panic disorder were,” said Stelnicki, who is a post-doctoral fellow at the U of R.
Carleton noted that while the study used industry-standard practices to screen for mental health disorders, the findings cannot represent confirmed diagnoses.
What Silas finds particularly troubling is that a quarter of nurses surveyed said they have not sought any kind of mental health support, even if only through friends and family.
“We have a lot of work to erase the stigma and provide the appropriate help to nurses,” she said.
“We as a system, as a society, need to make sure that our health care professionals are well staffed and well-protected to do their job, and this report is showing, well, we’re failing.”
The report revealed several main pressures nurses face on the job that contribute to decreased mental health. Nearly half said being short staffed was a source of extreme stress, with other main stressors being unpredictable staffing and scheduling, a lack of support by nursing administrators and not enough time to complete all their tasks.
Physical assault was the most commonly reported traumatic event for nurses, with a staggering 93 per cent saying they have been physically assaulted at work. Nearly half said they have been exposed to physical assault 11 or more times.
Silas hopes to see both provincial and federal levels of government work to address these concerns, and called for the establishment of safe staffing legislation such as a nurse-patient ratio.
“The health care system needs to deal with the short-staffing. This is becoming ridiculous,” she said.
