Help is Here: Healthcare & Behavioral Health Providers

Providing care to others during the COVID-19 pandemic can lead to stress, anxiety, fear, and other strong emotions. How you cope with these emotions can affect your well-being, the care you give to others while doing your job, and the well-being of the people you care about outside of work.

Recognize the Symptoms of Stress You May Be Experiencing

• Feeling irritation, anger, or denial
• Feeling uncertain, nervous, or anxious
• Feeling helpless or powerless
• Lacking motivation
• Feeling tired, overwhelmed, or burned out
• Feeling sad or depressed
• Having trouble sleeping
• Having trouble concentrating

The emotional toll it takes to respond to COVID-19 may lead to experiencing secondary traumatic stress. Secondary traumatic stress is stress reactions and symptoms resulting from exposure to another individual’s traumatic experiences, rather than from exposure directly to a traumatic event.

Ways to Reduce Secondary Traumatic Stress Reactions

• Acknowledge that secondary traumatic stress can impact anyone helping families after a traumatic event.
• Learn the symptoms including physical (fatigue, illness) and mental (fear, withdrawal, guilt)
• .Allow time for you and your family to recover from responding to the pandemic.
• Create a menu of personal self-care activities that you enjoy, such as spending time with friends and family, exercising, or reading a book.
• Take a break from media coverage of COVID-19.
• Ask for help if you feel overwhelmed or concerned that COVID-19 is affecting your ability to care for your family and patients as you did before the outbreak.
• Learn more tips for taking care of yourself during emergency response.

Download Handout

Employer Toolkit: Behavioral Health Resources During the COVID-19 Pandemic

• Using Telebehavioral Health during the COVID-19 Pandemic (ND DHS Guidance)
• The Crisis Kit: 5 Tools for Helping Clients through Turbulent Times