Mental Health and Wellness in Nursing Professions
Summary
Nursing professionals worldwide grapple with multifaceted mental health challenges that compromise both individual wellbeing and patient care quality. Elevated rates of stress, burnout, depression and anxiety are compounded by high-intensity work environments, staffing shortages and emotionally demanding clinical encounters. Exposure to workplace bullying, long shifts and inadequate support systems heightens risk of suicidal ideation and self-harm. The COVID-19 pandemic intensified these pressures, precipitating greater psychological distress and highlighting the fragility of existing support structures. Research underscores the need for both individual-level interventions—such as mindfulness, lifestyle and resilience-building programmes—and organisation-level reforms, including staffing adjustments, leadership training and accessible mental health services. Effective strategies demand reliable assessment tools and evidence-based interventions tailored to diverse clinical settings and cultural contexts, fostering a sustainable healthcare workforce.
Research from Nature Portfolio
Recent studies have illuminated the interplay between workplace dynamics and mental health outcomes in nursing cohorts. A cross-sectional investigation among Bangladeshi nurses revealed a strong association between high levels of workplace bullying, burnout and suicidal ideation, indicating an urgent need for anti-bullying policies and resilience training within healthcare institutions. Complementing this, methodological advances in psychiatric research are refining approaches to investigating mental health disorders, emphasising precision in diagnosis and the potential to tailor preventive strategies for high-risk occupational groups, including nursing staff. These developments signal a shift towards integrative models that account for individual vulnerabilities and organisational determinants of mental wellbeing.
Mental Health and Wellness in Nursing Professions publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in mental health and wellness in nursing professions across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Burnout: A state of emotional, physical and mental exhaustion caused by prolonged stress and overwork in professional settings.
Suicidal ideation: Thoughts or considerations of intentionally ending one’s own life, often linked to severe distress or psychiatric conditions.
Occupational stress: The harmful physiological and psychological responses when job demands exceed an individual’s coping capacity.
Psychometric validation: The process of evaluating reliability and validity of measurement instruments used to assess psychological constructs.
References
- Approaches to investigating mental health disorders. Nature Mental Health (2023).
- Suicide, self-harm, and suicide ideation in nurses and midwives: A systematic review of prevalence, contributory factors, and interventions. Journal of Affective Disorders (2023).
- Association of workplace bullying and burnout with nurses’ suicidal ideation in Bangladesh. Scientific Reports (2023).
- Effectiveness of Lifestyle Health Promotion Interventions for Nurses: A Systematic Review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (2019).
- Mental health of nursing professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic: a cross-sectional study. Revista de Saúde Pública (2022).
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