A Mental Health Hotline to Help Nurses
⚠ Safety Notice
If you or someone you love is in immediate danger, call 911.
If you’re having thoughts of suicide or are in emotional crisis, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
The Mental Health Hotline is here for support and resources—it is not a substitute for emergency services.
Nurses are highly trained and used to managing pressure, healing others, and solving problems. However, the trauma of losing patients, high patient expectations, and adjusting to extra shifts can be stressful. Such factors are why organizations like the American Nurses Association (ANA) advocate for health systems and policymakers to prioritize nurses’ mental well-being.
People—even robust and resilient healthcare providers like nurses—have different coping capacities. A case that lingers in mind to distress one nurse may not upset another at all. This may seem illogical and can sometimes cause anger and resentment, especially when a nurse does not feel understood.
Addressing mental health for nurses is urgent, and it also involves learning to cope effectively with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Taking care of your mental health is not only good for you, it also enables you to give your patients optimal care.
When to Seek Help
Signs of poor mental health can go unnoticed until they progress. It can also become routine to absorb the impacts of trauma and stress as you continuously fill extra shifts and care for patients. Be aware of the signs, don’t be afraid to reach out, and don’t let symptoms of stress or trauma build to a point where they’re hard to manage.
Self-care is essential, so check in with yourself regularly. Understand the symptoms of mental exhaustion and be aware of how you feel during difficult shifts. Seeking help demonstrates strength, not weakness. Here are some signs that it may be time to reach out.
Sleeping Too Much
Sleeping longer than usual to recover from an unusually long and demanding workday is normal. Sleeping more than necessary most of the time is not. You may also always feel fatigued or find it difficult to sleep because of a lack of recovery time.
Symptoms of Depression or Anxiety
You may notice increasing and persistent feelings of sadness, worthlessness, hopelessness, anger, or irritability. You may feel like things never go right and seldom feel happy. You may lose patience over things you used to take in stride, or feel like lashing out at the slightest provocation—and then feel guilty about it.
Anxiety may exist on its own or be a sign of depression. You may dread the future, worrying about what bad thing is going to happen next.
Isolation and Loneliness
Distrusting others and isolating yourself is another symptom. Feeling like you have no one to talk to despite being surrounded by good, trustworthy friends is common too. You may prefer being alone, yet feel lonely. You may want to visit with people but feel socially awkward and isolate yourself instead. You lose interest in things that used to bring you joy and often question whether people genuinely care about you.
Being Unable to Let Go of Past Trauma
When you relive traumatic events, you struggle to forget the suffering you’ve seen and the losses you’ve experienced. You want nothing more than peaceful sleep, but memories of those events keep reappearing unexpectedly and leave you mentally exhausted.
Compassion Fatigue
Compassion fatigue is an occupational hazard for nurses. Empathizing becomes difficult, and you become bothered by situations or decisions that feel wrong. You may also feel that caring is tiresome and that expressing it is a constant struggle.
Physical Symptoms
You can also experience physical symptoms that affect how you function, including:
- Unexpected, unexplained headaches or backaches
- Reproductive and/or sexual issues
- Appetite and/or digestive issues
Cumulative trauma and stress can cause many troubling responses and emotions. These feelings and experiences are normal, but they can cause severe physical and mental exhaustion. Acknowledging them does not mean you have a long-term mental health condition, but addressing them promptly is important.
Professional and Confidential Support
Mental health professionals are trained to protect your privacy and to offer understanding without judgment.
Even so, many nurses are hesitant to seek professional support. Common reasons include concerns about risk to their licenses and worries over what colleagues might think. Those concerns are valid, and it can be especially hard to accept that you need help when you spend your days supporting other people’s health and wellness.
But we all need help sometimes, even when we’re not used to being on the receiving end. Some parts of nursing, like patient loss, take a real toll. In those situations, professional support is often the best option, especially when self-care and other forms of support don’t seem to be working.
Professional support is focused on your long-term healing and wellness, and a clinician can help you track your progress over time. Find the person you feel most comfortable with.
Mental Health Resources for Nurses
Reaching out can make a real difference. The Mental Health Hotline, which you can explore at mentalhealthhotline.org, can connect you with mental health support and resources. The service is free and confidential—call 866-903-3787 any time.
The site has dedicated hotline pages for anxiety, PTSD, depression, bipolar disorder, panic attacks, psychosis, and schizophrenia, making it easier to find the page that best suits your needs. You can also search for additional resources by state.
The Mental Health Hotline website also explains common mental health conditions and how different kinds of support work, including information on support groups and other resources, so you can learn more about what you’re experiencing and the options available.
Peer Support Resources
Talking to peers in a support group helps because they face challenges similar to yours. They understand the daily frustrations of nursing and have worked through difficult situations of their own. Sharing your feelings with a trusted colleague can bring real relief.
Your peers stand with you and are ready to support you. You can also offer help when you notice a peer struggling. You may have spotted concerning signs but feel unsure how to bring it up. Often the right step is simply gathering the courage to ask, “Are you OK?”
Support can start with a conversation. Don’t wait for a colleague to ask for help, especially if you’ve noticed they’re having a hard time. It may feel uncomfortable, but checking in and acknowledging that they may be struggling can provide much-needed relief.
It’s important that you and your peers know you don’t have to struggle alone. Just as important is making sure your colleagues can access support and crisis resources. Before leaving a support group meeting, make a plan to check on one another and let each other know you’re rooting for them.
Family Support
Worry is almost automatic when you’re the family member of a nurse. You worry about how their career affects the family, their well-being, and their health. Long working hours also mean they miss special occasions and family events.
As a result, you may carry significant family responsibilities on your own. You may also notice that missing gatherings and special moments affects your loved one’s mental health.
These stresses can be overwhelming, and you may wonder how to be present for your family or how to support a family member who is a nurse.
Let your family know what support you need. And if you don’t have family nearby, you can connect with others online. Sharing support, frustrations, humor, and concerns with people who understand can help you feel less alone.
Building Resilience
As a nurse, you’re accustomed to stress, and it may seem like patient cases don’t noticeably affect you. But the National League for Nursing (NLN) notes that the trauma of treating patients and daily stress can accumulate, potentially contributing to mental health conditions.
It can be easy to ignore what seems like a minor or occasional impact until it becomes clear the impact is growing. Building resilience reduces the effects of trauma and stress and helps protect your well-being.
Strengthening protective factors—good physical health, access to resources, and social support—can help you manage cumulative stress more effectively. Nurses know the importance of physical health, but it’s easy to forget the basics during shift work and hectic schedules. Physical and mental health are connected, so even small steps to protect your physical health can improve how you feel mentally.
You can build resiliency skills and use them as preventive measures. To start, consider these steps:
- Acknowledge your feelings by naming your emotions: fear, relief, sadness, guilt, anger, shock, frustration, and so on. Understanding what you feel can help you work with a mental health professional to address concerns early.
- Have compassion for yourself. You are human, and your work is demanding, so experiencing stress and burnout is common. People respond to these emotions differently, so don’t feel guilty for needing help.
- Talk to someone about your feelings and symptoms, whether through professional support or peers.
- Care for yourself with the same attention you give your patients. Your health matters just as much as theirs.
- Explore coping strategies and keep the ones that work for you.
Where to Find Support
There are several places to find the support you need, and it’s worth choosing whatever feels most comfortable—seeking mental health services can feel intimidating. It’s okay to feel uneasy about going to your employer; if so, you can call the Mental Health Hotline, talk to your primary care provider, or contact a local community mental health center. You can also ask your HR department about your Employee Assistance Program (EAP) and insurance coverage.
You’re Not Alone
Nurses are far from alone in this. A widely cited 2022 report on the state of mental health in nursing, based on a survey of more than 2,500 nurses, found that 75% had experienced burnout, 66% reported compassion fatigue, and 64% reported feelings of depression. More recent surveys continue to show high rates of burnout and emotional exhaustion across the profession.
Mental health is not something to be embarrassed about, and these experiences are common among healthcare professionals. Reaching out makes timely, supportive help possible—and you deserve that support. The Mental Health Hotline is free, confidential, and available any time, day or night.