NHS staff are at risk of high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) if they don't get the right support as the coronavirus outbreak subsides, health service adviser Prof Neil Greenberg has said.
For now there's a national focus on health and care workers. Public billboards praise them, millions turn out on the street for a weekly round of applause and volunteers have been rushing to help in any way they can. But the height of the crisis is when many staff will be in coping mode. It's when things slow down - and the clapping stops - that, psychologists believe, the real risk of difficulties will arise.
People may need months or even years of "active monitoring" of their mental health after things return to some semblance of normality, according to Prof Greenberg, a world-leading expert in trauma at King's College London.
The NHS in England is providing crisis support to its staff. But it hasn't produced a formal long-term plan to offer extra psychological services in the aftermath of the pandemic.
It's what happens after the trauma that is "most predictive of what people will be like in terms of their mental health", according to Prof Greenberg. How well people are supported and how much stress they're put under as they try to recover can make or break whether someone manages well or develops far more serious difficulties including PTSD.
"If we muck it up then that's going to make the trauma they've already had much more difficult to deal with," he says.
Source: BBC News, 15 May 2020
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