With the dying by day.. home in fear at night

Nurses & docs’ mental crisis

- Geraldine McKelvie

THOUSANDS of desperate NHS workers have turned to mental health crisis helplines as they struggle with the horrors of the coronavirus front line.

One charity alone is being contacted by 50 workers a day – some suicidal – after long shifts with dying patients.

And experts fear thousands of medics will be struck down with post-traumatic stress disorder – the same condition that has torn apart soldiers returning from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We can reveal that… NURSES are suffering panic attacks and sleepless nights as they fear they’ll be the next to die.

MEDICS cannot turn to their families for comfort because they are forced to self-isolate in fear of the virus after treating the sick and dying.

NHS BOSSES are so worried they have set up a task force to deal with the inevitable mental health fallout.

One stressed-out nurse, who was already on the verge of burnout before the crisis hit, said she wept every morning on the bus to her London hospital.

She said: “I cry on the way to work and I have panic attacks, wondering if today is the day I will get the virus.

“When you see that so many nurses are passing away, you think, ‘That could be me.’ I’m in my twenties. I’ve treated patients my age with no underlying conditions.

Impact

“But I shouldn’t be on a bus thinking, ‘What will they do with my clothes if I pass away? Does my roommate have to pack up my things?’”