HK researcher puts focus on healthcare workers’ mental health
By SAM RINK
An enduring image of the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic is people on their balconies or in their front yards, clapping for healthcare workers. While the public health crisis brought the essential labor of medical professionals and caregivers to the front of the world’s conscience, most of them still aren’t receiving proper mental health support, according to Rachel Hoopsick, an assistant professor in the Department of Health and Kinesiology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
“Healthcare workers have always been sort of subjected to high levels of burnout,” she said. “But COVID really magnified that.”
Hoopsick recently received more than $3 million from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to lead a five-year project—alongside fellow researcher Gregory Homish at the University at Buffalo—exploring substance abuse, mental health issues and suicidality among healthcare workers. The project will factor in not only individual risk factors for these issues but also the impact of social, interpersonal and environmental factors.
“We've got a fairly good idea of how to keep people physically safe in the workplace, but less thought is given to how we manage psychosocial hazards,” she said.
The longitudinal study also aims to focus more on how socioeconomic level may affect employees’ mental health and will recruit lower-wage and non-executive healthcare workers such as nursing assistants and non-medical staff. These positions are highly underrepresented in research, which tends to center physicians and higher-paid staff, Hoopsick said.
“These are folks who are working in the same fast paced, high-stress sorts of environments that physicians are working in,” she said.” But they are, of course, compensated much less for the work that they do, they have much less autonomy over how and when they do their jobs. And then these folks also often have far fewer supports and resources to cope with those stressors.”
Much of Hoopsick’s previous research addressed mental health and addiction among those involved in the military and their families, which is where she became familiar with the concept of moral injury, a term used to describe the psychological pain one may experience after acting against their beliefs or values. But moral injury doesn’t only impact military members, according to Hoopsick.
“This is not just something that happens in a combat type of experience or setting, but that this is something that lots of different occupations can experience as a part of their jobs,” she said. “Think of healthcare workers or maybe healthcare leaders doing things that they don't think are morally right, or perhaps failing to act in circumstances where they think that they should have.”
The politicization of healthcare over the past several years has also made the lives of healthcare workers more difficult, according to Hoopsick. Public health actions such as getting vaccinated, wearing masks and social distancing have become controversial, even among healthcare employees, which has impacted the everyday experience of many.
“We've seen a massive erosion of public trust,” Hoopsick said. “Through channels of misinformation and disinformation, there's much more mistrust in health institutions, public health workers and healthcare workers generally.”
In 2022, the U.S. surgeon general released an advisory concerning the burnout crisis across mental health occupations and calling for institutional solutions, to which Hoopsick hopes this study can contribute. She and her colleagues hope their research can assist in the development of systemic strategies for improving workplace stress among healthcare workers, which could improve the overall health of the people doing some of the most crucial work possible.
“Outside of home, the next place where we spend the most time is work, and we spend many of our waking hours in the workplace. Work can be a very powerful determinant of health.”