Mental Health
Approximately 1 in 5 adults in the U.S. - 43.8 million, or 18.5% - experiences mental illness in a given year. Healthcare clinicians work in fast-paced, high stress environments where they often bear witness to some of the worst moments of humanity. If you are feeling stressed, anxious, sad or worse, you are not alone. Below are organizations that offer mental health resources and support. Please reach out and get the help that you need.
The Emotional PPE Project is an independent tax-exempt nonprofit (501(c)(3)) organization fully staffed by volunteers. The Emotional PPE Project connects healthcare workers in need with licensed mental health professionals who can help. No cost. No insurance. Just a trained professional to talk to.
The Emotional PPE Project is a directory that provides contact information of volunteer mental health practitioners to healthcare workers whose mental health has been impacted by the COVID-19 crisis.
Free Tools and Apps to Support the Mental Health & Resilience of All Nurses
Every day, across the nation, millions of nurses experience extraordinary stress and other impacts to their mental health and well-being as the pandemic continues.
In partnership with other leading nurse organizations, the American Nurses Foundation launched the Well-Being Initiative to offer resources that focus on caring for nurses as they tirelessly care for others.
In 2017, the National Academy of Medicine launched the Action Collaborative on Clinician Well-Being and Resilience, a network of more than 200 organizations committed to reversing trends in clinician burnout.
The Clinician Well-Being Collaborative has three goals:
Raise the visibility of clinician anxiety, burnout, depression, stress, and suicide
Improve baseline understanding of challenges to clinician well-being
Advance evidence-based, multidisciplinary solutions to improve patient care by caring for the caregiver
The Clinician Well-Being Collaborative is proud to have contributed to the movement to address burnout by convening, publishing, and shaping the national conversation along the priority areas of leadership engagement, breaking the culture of silence, organizational promising practices and metrics, workload and workflow, action on consensus report recommendations, and sustainability. The Clinician Well-Being Collaborative will continue to meet through 2022 to identify evidence-based strategies to improve clinician well-being at both the individual and systems levels. In 2022, the NAM Clinician Well-Being Collaborative will deliver a National Plan for health workforce well-being.
“Make It OK” is a campaign to reduce the stigma of mental illnesses. The Make It OK partner organizations have pledged their commitment to change the hearts and minds about the misperceptions of mental illnesses by encouraging open conversations and education on the topic.
The Blurt Foundation
The Blurt Foundation exists to make a difference to anyone affected by depression. Being diagnosed can be overwhelming – there’s a lot to learn and plenty of prejudice to battle. Telling people is tough, and not everyone will understand. That’s why Blurt is here for you, whenever you need them, for anything at all.
Blurt will help you understand depression and what it means for you. Blurt will support you, listen to you and introduce you to people who’ve been where you are. Blurt will help you break down barriers and broach the subject with those closest to you.
NAMI
NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, is the nation’s largest grassroots mental health organization dedicated to building better lives for the millions of Americans affected by mental illness.
What started as a small group of families gathered around a kitchen table in 1979 has blossomed into the nation's leading voice on mental health. Today, we are an association of more than 500 local affiliates who work in your community to raise awareness and provide support and education that was not previously available to those in need.
Therapy Aid Coalition offers free therapy sessions to essential workers, including healthcare workers. Therapy Aid Coalition's mission is to develop a national network of psychotherapists, capable of responding to crises that occur within the United States. By offering support, training and compensation to our psychotherapists, we are able to ensure those impacted by national crises receive prompt quality care and support. By providing training opportunities and a community of support to our network of psychotherapists, we reduce the risk of burnout and vicarious traumatization.
The Code Green Campaign
The Code Green Campaign is a first responder oriented mental health advocacy and education organization. Also known as Code Green, we serve all types of first responders, including firefighters, EMTs, paramedics, dispatchers, police, corrections, air medical, and search & rescue. Our name is a combination of the color for mental health awareness (green), and from the “code alerts” that EMS uses to designate an emergency patient. The idea is that Code Green is calling a code alert on the mental health of first responders.