Trajectories of mental health and well-being across healthcare workers during COVID-19 pandemic: a Swiss longitudinal study

This longitudinal study examined the trajectories of healthcare workers’ mental health from the first to the second COVID-19 wave (May 2020–December 2020) in a Swiss tertiary hospital, and their association with individual and organizational factors. For each mental health outcome (depression, anxiety, peritraumatic stress, and well-being), a separate analysis identified two trajectories: one with higher, persistent levels of symptoms and one that was resilient, with low-level symptoms. The persistent trajectory comprised about 25%–30% of participants for anxiety, depression and peritraumatic stress and 47% for well-being; because the classifications were outcome-specific, membership differed across outcomes (about 15% of participants were on a persistent trajectory for all four outcomes and 46% resilient for all four). We found that women, nurses, caregivers, non-managerial employees, and frontline COVID-19 workers were more likely to follow a persistent trajectory. Organizational risk factors were a high workload and an irregular work schedule. These results provide a basis for implementing risk-adapted prevention measures and resilience-promotion programs to protect health workers from the impact of major crises. Future research should address the needs of vulnerable health workers to provide evidence-based health promotion.