Healthcare staff mental health trajectories during the COVID-19 pandemic: findings from the COVID-19 Staff Wellbeing Survey

Abstract

Background Cross-sectional studies have shown that the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the mental health of healthcare staff. However, it is less well understood how working over the long term in successive COVID-19 waves affects staff well-being. Aims To identify subpopulations within the health and social care staff workforce with differentiated trajectories of mental health symptoms during phases of the COVID-19 pandemic. Method The COVID-19 Staff Wellbeing Survey assessed health and social care staff well-being within an area of the UK at four time points, separated by 3-month intervals, spanning November 2020 to August 2021. Results Growth mixture models were performed on the depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder longitudinal data. Two class solutions provided the best fit for all models. The vast majority of the workforce were best represented by the low-symptom class trajectory, where by symptoms were consistently below the clinical cut-off for moderate-to-severe symptoms. A sizable minority (13–16%) were categorised as being in the high-symptom class, a group who had symptom levels in the moderate-to-severe range throughout the peaks and troughs of the pandemic. In the depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder models, the high-symptom class perceived communication from their organisation to be less effective than the low-symptom class. Conclusions This research identified a group of health service staff who reported persistently high mental health symptoms during the pandemic. This group of staff may well have particular needs in terms of the provision of well-being support services.

On the path to recovery: traumatic stress research during the COVID-19 pandemic 2021–2023

“…Almost half of a sample of front-line healthcare workers assessed by structured interview during the pandemic met criteria for PTSD, and nearly 40% for major depressive disorder, with pandemic-related traumatic stressors appearing directly related to depression and to exacerbate the effects of pre-pandemic trauma exposure when PTSD occurred (Wild et al, 2022 ). A longitudinal study of health and social care personnel between November 2020 and August 2021 found that one in seven (13–16%) reported severe and unremitting symptoms of psychological distress and physical pain across peaks and periods of relative respite in the pandemic (Jordan et al, 2023 ). In a paper published in this Special Issue, focus groups with healthcare workers, physicians, nurses, midwives, and allied health professionals of under-represented ethnocultural backgrounds in that same mid-pandemic time period identified fear of infection, traumatic grief due to exposure to patients’ suffering and deaths, guilt due to potentially infecting loved ones, and extreme work hours and workloads as critical contributors to mental health problems (Qureshi et al, 2022 ).…”

Did the prevalence of depressive symptoms change during the COVID-19 pandemic? A multilevel analysis on longitudinal data from healthcare workers

“…First, recent findings on the prevalence of depressive symptoms in HCW are contradictory ( de Kock et al, 2021 ; Marvaldi et al, 2021 ), which may depend on the operationalization of the outcome, the sample characteristics, and/or measurement instruments. Second, existing studies on depressive symptoms at the beginning of the pandemic among HCW contain few longitudinal data of outcomes or determinants ( Jordan et al, 2023 ). Third, determinants or moderating factors of depressive symptoms over time that account for actual workplace exposure to COVID-19 were not examined.…”