Psychological distress and resilience in first responders and health care workers during the COVID?19 pandemic

Pink, Jennifer, Gray, Nicola S., O'Connor, Chris, Knowles, James R., Simkiss, Nicola J. and Snowden, Robert J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9900-480X 2021. Psychological distress and resilience in first responders and health care workers during the COVID?19 pandemic. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology 94 (4) , pp. 789-807. 10.1111/joop.12364

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Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, first responders and health care workers faced elevated virus-related risks through prolonged contacts with the public. Research suggests that these workers already experienced lower levels of psychological well-being linked to occupational risks. Thus, the pandemic’s impact might have particularly affected mental health in these groups. This paper analysed data from a large-scale Welsh population study (N = 12,989) from June to July 2020. Levels of psychological distress were compared across various occupations, including police, fire and rescue, and NHS health care workers. Resilience was also indexed, and its role considered as a protective factor for psychological distress. Surprisingly, health care workers reported lower distress levels than the general population. Further, fire and rescue and police groups had lower distress than most groups and significantly higher resilience. Within police officers, higher resilience levels were protective for distress. Fire and rescue workers were half as likely as others to report distress, even accounting for demographic factors and resilience. The findings offer an optimistic view of psychological resilience in these critical occupations. They illustrate potential benefits to one’s mental health of playing a crucial societal role during crises and reiterate the importance of enhancing resilience within groups who encounter high-risk situations daily. Practitioner points Our findings provide evidence that health care workers and first responders showed lower levels of psychological distress than the general population during the first period of lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom. This may indicate that playing a critical role in society during an episode of crisis, and acting to help others, may be protective of one’s own mental health. The research also provides an optimistic view of the psychological resilience of critical first responders and health care workers during a period early on in the COVID-19 pandemic (June–July 2020). This highlights the benefits of fostering resilience in those working within high-risk first responder and health care occupations.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Psychology
Additional Information:	This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.
Publisher:	Wiley
ISSN:	0963-1798
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	13 August 2021
Date of Acceptance:	27 July 2021
Last Modified:	02 May 2023 17:36
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/143375

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