May is Mental Health Awareness Month

Mental health is a vital component to overall health, and maintaining good mental health can be particularly challenging during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Survey results from mental health provider Ginger have found that during the Covid-19 pandemic, 88 percent of workers reported experiencing moderate to extreme stress over the past 4 to 6 weeks and 40 percent have experienced burnout at work. A similar study from the Kaiser Family Foundation also found that throughout the pandemic, 4 in 10 adults in the U.S. have reported symptoms of anxiety or depressive disorder, up from 1 in 10 adults who reported these symptoms in 2019.

Community of support

The Whole U at the University of Washington works to provide resources and opportunities for employees and community members to strengthen personal wellness and promote connectivity.

“Whether you have previously struggled with mental health and illness prior to the pandemic or are facing for the first time such impacts in your life, it’s important that we all know we are not alone, and that through connecting on shared experiences we can begin to progress forward together.” – The Whole U

Several groups around campus and in the community offer programming and services to help employees cope with stress, promote wellness and work-life balance and access mental health care:

• GME Resident and Fellow Wellness Resources
  The GME Wellness Service helps trainees and their families cope with common stressors of training, and promote work-life integration and overall wellness through advocacy, mental health services and wellness events and resources.
• UW Medicine Employee Mental Health Support (EMHS) program
  The EMHS program is available to help connect UW Medicine employees and their household members to mental health services.
• Faculty peer to peer support
  The peer to peer program is designed to provide a supportive listener after a stressful event or when your job feels overwhelming. Any care team member can access one on one support from a colleague in their field – a trained peer supporter
• Washington Physicians Health Program
  Washington Physicians Health Program provides confidential assistance to health-care professionals with medical conditions that may affect their ability to practice medicine safely.
• Free mindfulness cultivation series in May
  This May join a Tuesday meditation series focused on learning how to create a meditation practice, bring self-compassion and self-acceptance into your practice, and incorporate mindfulness into your routine.

National organizations such as Mental Health America also offer a number of helpful tools for promoting mental health and wellbeing such as adapting after trauma and stress, processing big changes, supporting others and taking time for yourself.

Loving-Kindness Meditation for PTSD symptoms

Several Department of Medicine faculty and trainees dedicate their research and clinical efforts to improving mental health supports and therapies for their patients and communities.

Among them, Gastroenterology professor Dr. David Kearney has recently worked with patients at the VA suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to understand the role non-trauma focused therapy, specifically loving-kindness meditation, can have on improving PTSD symptoms. Loving-kindness meditation is a form of mindfulness meditation originally practiced in Buddhist teachings designed to repeatedly elicit feelings of kindness and compassion for oneself and others.

“People with PTSD often have difficulty feeling positive emotions," says Kearney, "which can lead to what is termed ‘emotional numbing’ – so a treatment that intentionally brings forth positive emotions might be a remedy for these ‘constrictive’ manifestation of PTSD.”

Kearney’s study built on research that found that treatments for PTSD that do not have a specific focus on trauma-related content can result in improvements in PTSD symptoms. In comparison to the groups participating in the standard group sessions based on cognitive behavioral therapy, the veterans participating in the loving-kindness meditation sessions showed higher repeated attendance rates and more positive improvement in PTSD and depression metrics.

“We hope the results will be independently validated by other research groups and lead to an expanded range of options for people seeking treatment for PTSD.”

Mental health amongst physicians and trainees

Mental health is a particularly important topic for medical professionals, as physicians have double the rates of depression and suicide as the general population.

Dr. Elisabeth Poorman is a senior fellow in the Addiction Medicine Fellowship program in the Division of General Internal Medicine. Poorman works to understand and address substance use disorders amongst underserved populations as well as substance use, mental health and burnout amongst medical professionals.

Within the medical field, many providers juggle a myriad of responsibilities and projects all while staying committed to their patients, working to continuously stay up to date on new medical advancements and teaching students and trainees. Through Poorman’s research, she and others have found that this environment takes a toll.

“Since I began publishing in academic journals and news articles on the topic, I have been contacted by many students, trainees, and physicians in practice in various states of crisis, but afraid to seek care,” says Poorman. “They are surrounded by help but afraid to ask for it.”

Work like Poorman’s highlights the need for important structural changes needed to support clinicians and healthcare workers and a shift in priority in wellness outreach from productivity to advocacy for more supportive and manageable work environments, including setting safe patient limits and hours for physicians.

“I feel that the ultimate purpose of wellness is rather to maintain our empathy for our patients, set healthy boundaries with our work, and advocate for the systems we work in to be less crushing to us and our patients,” says Poorman.

“With respect to mental health, it is important that we remember that physicians are humans too, who are asked to do superhuman things but are not superhuman.”

We can all help prevent suicide. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline provides 24/7, free and confidential support for people in distress, prevention and crisis resources for you or your loved ones, and best practices for professionals.

Call 1-800-273-8255 -or- CLICK HERE TO CHAT

For a crisis counselor: Text HOME to 741741