MHM Magazine

A nurse told me something last year that has stuck in my mind. We were in the middle of the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic and all healthcare workers (HCWs) were taking strain. She said that before the pandemic – “when life was normal” – she wore her uniform with self-assurance and dignity, standing tall as her epaulets shone proudly while she walked through a shopping mall. Now, this has all changed. In public, her nursing uniform became a symbol of dread. She wouldn’t even stop at a grocery store after work. She felt people looked at her with suspicion and fear, wishing she wasn’t there. She was, after all, a nurse coming straight out of a hospital, and the risk of her spreading the coronavirus was reasonably high given her daily duties of interacting with patients. The smiles and unspoken gratitude that greeted her in public places in 2019 were replaced with paranoia in 2020. She felt stigmatized. Her uniform had become a mark of this stigma. She was not alone in her experience. Timothy Dye, from Rochester University in New York, led a large global study of COVID- 19-related stigma and bullying with 7411 research participants from 173 countries. He and his colleagues discovered that HCWs are significantly more likely to experience COVID-19-related stigma; they more frequently believed that people gossip about others with COVID-19; and they felt that people with COVID-19 lose respect in the community. The World Health Organisation (WHO) warned against the effects of social stigma in an outbreak. It results in unfair labels, stereotypes, discrimination, and loss of status because of a perceived link with the virus. Cognitively, stigma and fear are intertwined, because Covid-19 is a new disease with many unknowns and humans are afraid of the unknown. It’s easy to project our EDITORIAL By Suntosh R. Pillay Clinical Psychologist Durban suntoshpillay@gmail.com She was, after all, a nurse coming straight out of a hospital, and the risk of her spreading the coronavirus was reasonably high given her daily duties of interacting with patients STIGMA: A SILENT THREAT TO THE MENTAL WELLBEING OF HEALTHCARE WORKERS DURING COVID-19 phobias onto ‘others’ – ironically, the very healthcare workers saving lives are the ones who become stigmatised and even bullied. Research shows that Sub- Saharan Africa (14.0%), Southern Asia (10.7%) and Northern America (10.6%) had the highest rates of reported experiences of COVID-19-related bullying. Amongst a range of recommendations, they note the urgency of providing HCWs with Issue 2 | 2021 | MENTALHEALTHMATTERS | 1 MHM