Psychosocial Problems among Psychiatric Nurses for Caring Patients with Mental Disorders during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

COVID-19 has a negative effect on the psychological well-being of psychiatric nurses. Thus, examining the psychosocial response of nurses is important for preventing more serious mental health problems and disruption of the quality of nursing care. This study aimed to evaluate the psychosocial problems of nurses who provided nursing care to patients with mental health disorders during the COVID-19 pandemic. A quantitative study with a cross-sectional design was conducted. The 101 nurses at Central Mental Health Hospital who provide nursing care to patients with mental health disorders were recruited through consecutive sampling. The instruments used were the demographic questionnaire, the Expanded Nursing Stress Scale, Zung Self-Rating Anxiety Scale, and The Connor–Davidson Resilience Scale 25. Univariate and bivariate analyses were used to process the data. The mean score of 45.1 (±24.3) was obtained for the ENSS; around 97% of nurses have a work stress score below the average, 4.95% have mild-moderate anxiety, and 28.7% have a low level of resilience. Work stress and contact frequency, work stress and gender, anxiety and contact frequency, as well as resilience and contact frequency all correlated significantly ( p value <0.05). The Pearson test showed a significant positive correlation between work stress and anxiety ( p : 0.002, r: 0.299). However, there was no significant correlation between anxiety and resilience ( p : 0.643, r: 0.47), nor between work stress and resilience ( p : 0.643; r: 0.47). Psychosocial disorders that psychiatric nurses face include occupational stress, mild-moderate anxiety, and low resilience. The government can create specific infection control guidelines for the mental health setting, and hospital management or ward leaders can also provide support to psychiatric nurses to increase resilience in reducing psychosocial problems.

Job Stress and Emotion Regulation relation to Workplace Wellbeing among Psychiatric Nurses

“…Conversely, Tuvesson et al (2011) (43) noted in their research findings that the staff in the current research seemed to report extremely low perceived stress levels, which contradicted this conclusion. Also, these results disagreed with a study carried out by Rahmat et al (2022) (44) to determine the psychological issues that nurses with mental health disorders who cared for patients during the COVID-19 pandemic faced. According to the report, the majority of nurses score lower than average when it comes to work stress.…”

Workload and psychosocial risks among nurses in mental health and psychiatry in Chile

“…Finally, it is interesting to highlight the high total score on the psychosocial risks scale in professionals who had low satisfaction with the number of patients, a result that, unfortunately, reinforces the fact that psychosocial risks have become the main cause of occupational health problems experienced by nursing professionals in Chile (Canales-Vergara et al, 2016) and in the world (Rahmat et al, 2023). The workload and psychosocial risks of mental health and psychiatric nursing professionals in Chile possibly impact people passing through outpatient, inpatient and community units, with some consequences that need to be investigated, including the incidence of adverse effects in patients (Frigola-Capell et al, 2022) and the level of user satisfaction (Bolados-Ávila et al, 2023), among others, aspects that are important to analyse from a global health perspective in a journal of international scope with a view to the development of quality mental health and psychiatric nursing.…”

“…Psychosocial risks in the workplace for mental health and psychiatric nurses are multifaceted, where the evidence shows that the lack of social support and the absence of a supportive work environment, along with inadequate training and resources, may contribute to feelings of incompetence, frustration and increased stress, decrease job satisfaction and contribute to burnout and work overload in psychiatric and mental health nurses (Giménez-Espert et al, 2020;Rahmat et al, 2023).…”

The Mediating Effect of Professional Values on the Relationship Between Self-Leadership and Compassion Competence of Community Mental Health Nurses

“…6,29 Mental health nurses prioritize the emotional and psychological care of patients. 2,30 Nurses with high compassion competence can listen to their patients' concerns and empathize with their suffering; accordingly, they can provide emotional support and promote therapeutic communication to improve the patients' emotional and psychological recovery. 4,5 Therefore, compassion competence is crucial for mental health nurses.…”