Mental Health in Nursing Education: Creating a Supportive Environment for Faculty and Students

Mental health is a critical part of our overall health that is often neglected by health care professionals, whether in academia or practice. Health care workers in the United States require engagement in demanding and sometimes unsafe responsibilities, including exposure to infectious diseases and, more recently, violence from patients and their families. Most health care workers do not seek professional mental health support because of time, lack of financial resources, or the sense that they should be able to manage their mental health needs on their own (Bergman & Rushton, 2023). Academic institutions are not immune to these challenges in the health care setting, and they can play a critical role in promoting both faculty and student mental health and in preparing students for clinical practice. This special issue of Nursing Education Perspectives calls attention to the mounting mental health issues affecting health care workers across the nation. Focusing on key initiatives that address mental health in nursing education, guest editors Audrey Marie Beauvais, DNP, MSN, MBA, RN, and Jeffrey S. Jones, DNP, RN, PMHCNS-BC, LNC, have shaped a valuable collection of research and evidence that provides support for nurse educators, whether in supporting the well-being of students in the academic setting, in teaching a mental health course, or in meeting the mental health needs of the next generation of nurses, while at the same time helping them learn how to meet the mental health needs of others through lived experience. Alarmingly, research published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, 2023) on health care workers’ well-being found that the industry is confronting an acute mental health crisis. The percentage of health care workers who reported harassment more than doubled from 2018 to 2022. Nearly half of health care workers, 46 percent, reported frequently feeling burned out, and 44 percent of workers intended to look for a new job. CDC research showed that the top reasons for leaving their positions included insufficient staffing, the intensity of the workload, and the emotional toll of the job. These findings are disturbing, especially when reviewed in context with data collected before the coronavirus pandemic. The academic setting is not exempt from the stressors affecting workers in practice. Barbayannis et al. (2022) found that academic stress may be the most dominant acute issue influencing the mental health of college-age students. It has been found that many mental health disorders, including depression, anxiety, and substance use disorder, begin during this time and throughout the lived experiences of being a college student (Liu et al., 2019). It is estimated that between 21 percent and 43 percent of undergraduate college students experience depression (Tung et al., 2018). As a group, nursing students experience greater levels of stress than both college students in general and health care workers across the spectrum. The intensive pressure and rigor of nursing education, the emphasis on acquiring the requisite knowledge and skills to practice safely, and the gravity of clinical experiences contribute to stress and burnout among nursing students (Jenkins et al., 2019; Stubin et al., 2024). Evidence indicates student burnout affects overall academic success, attrition, and clinical performance (Wei et al., 2021). Nurse educators are also at high risk of experiencing emotional exhaustion and burnout due largely to exposure to unhealthy work environments in both clinical and didactic settings (Dugger, 2024). Growing workload demands of nursing faculty result in high levels of stress and a loss of work-life balance. This compounded stress frequently leads educators to consider leaving the workforce, intensifying the shortage of nurse educators and, therefore, our capacity to increase the growing need for graduates prepared to practice. As educators, we must promote effective mechanisms that support mental well-being and psychological safety among nurses and nursing students in all roles. Integrating strategies to support students’ mental health, promote self-care, and build resilience has the potential to enhance a student’s ability to manage current stress, improve academic and clinical success, and strengthen the capacity to address future stressors in the workplace (Stubin et al., 2024). Studying academic stress factors associated with mental health disorders could provide us with valuable information to mitigate strain on students throughout nursing education (Reverté-Villarroya et al., 2021). Nurse educators, too, must be encouraged to develop strategies that decrease their own levels of stress and burnout. As educators, we must promote effective mechanisms that support mental well-being and psychological safety among nurses and nursing students in all roles. Integrating strategies to support students' mental health, promote self-care, and build resilience has the potential to enhance a student's ability to manage current stress, improve academic and clinical success, and strengthen the capacity to address future stressors in the workplace. Strengthening the health care workforce is a goal we must commit to, whether in preparing the next generation of nurses or in the ways we teach and role model healthy physical and mental behaviors. The health of the nation depends upon the well-being of our workforce. This issue, replete with research that explores mental health issues in nursing education and strategies to mitigate this stress, will help guide all of us in creating an environment that supports the learner, the educator, and, in the long term, our practice.