There has been a major impact on the emotional and physical health of healthcare workers worldwide due to the epidemic of COVID-19.

As many as one in four doctors in Italy reported experiencing signs of anxiety or sadness in June and December 2020, according to a new survey.

Female, under 60, and working more than 40 hours per week were all factors that made doctors more likely to suffer from anxiety and despair.

One look at these numbers reveals just a fraction of how much COVID-19 has impacted the mental health of healthcare workers worldwide.

An expert in acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), Steven C. Hayes says we are at a critical juncture to confront the mental health pandemic that is engulfing our traumatized workforce.

Many segments of our society have been asked to do more and more, but not always given the psychological tools to do it in a healthy way, he told Healthline. “I think if we mishandle this moment, we will face years of trouble in dealing with many sectors of our society,” he said.

Health care workers have reported a wide range of mental health issues throughout the epidemic, including anxiety and despair, mood swings and social disengagement.

According to Dr. Wizdom Powell, director of the University of Connecticut’s Health Disparities Institute and an associate professor of psychiatry, anxiety, fear, worry, and the sensation of being on edge are all signs of PTSD.

When we look at PTSD and depression symptoms, we see that they’re intertwined. Depression coupled with anxiety is a newer kind of depression that I see in the clinic,” Powell said.

Powell claimed that during the epidemic, she witnessed a new sort of burnout among healthcare workers because they were asked to put their own or their families’ needs before of their own.

In an interview, she described the feeling of “watching your body from the outside and watching it all happen… [W]hat I’m seeing is them feeling a little frayed at the edges, while at the same time being so motivated to stay in the firefight,” she explained.

Hayes, on the other hand, emphasized the difficulties of interacting with persons who are likely to be aggressive.

There will be no serene thoughts or feelings if someone is yelling at you that they won’t wear a mask, he explained.

As a result, what does it mean to have an overworked workforce?

According to a Morning Consult survey, 18 percent of healthcare employees in the United States have resigned since February 2020, which is around one in five.

In addition, a Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll indicated that three out of ten U.S. healthcare employees were considering quitting their job. Nearly six out of ten people said that the epidemic had a negative effect on their mental health.

In other countries, the situation is the same.

32 percent of British citizens believe that the U.S. Since June 2020, the number of doctors exploring early retirement has doubled.

Maintaining a steady supply of healthcare workers while battling the coronavirus and ensuring its long-term viability will be a major problem, according to this data.

There is a mental health catastrophe, a shadow epidemic, in the United States, and that’s what that tells me.” If we don’t do something about [this], we’ll end up with a sick and exhausted workforce. According to Powell, “And that’s not good for any global economy.”

As a result, she said, this would not just be a blow to the healthcare workforce, but also to the nation as a whole.

A cough or fever will not cause this loss, according to Powell’s assertions.

According to her, this is due to a failure on her part to attend to the emotional scars that lie behind the physical ones.

This “shadow pandemic” will worsen the mental health of both healthcare staff and the general public, she warned. “We’ll lose more workers than we can count” if we don’t address it, she warned.