You're listening to shortwave from NPR.

Hey shortwavers, Emily Kwong here with Reto Chatty and Piers Mental Health Correspondent.

Reto, you have been looking into the mental health toll of this pandemic.

I have.

Yeah, and specifically the toll these last two years has taken on the mental health and

well-being of nurses.

Yes, and hi, Emily.

So I have been following the impact of the pandemic on various groups of people including

frontline healthcare workers who have kept working without a break, surge after surge

through countless deaths, endless staffing shortages, which reach crisis levels in the

past year.

And you might remember that last year I did an episode on this part on how many of these

frontline providers are burned out and exhausted.

Yeah, after two years of this pandemic, they are more than burnt out.

They are experiencing psychiatric symptoms.

A recent study found that a majority of American healthcare workers report symptoms that

include depression and thoughts of suicide and a note to listeners is that we will be

talking about suicide in this episode.

You and I have talked about suicide prevention on this show before it's something everyone

on our team on the science desk cares very much about and we want to say outright that

if you or someone you know is considering suicide, call the national suicide prevention

lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or text the word home to 7-4-1-7-4-1.

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