Mental health and coping strategies among nursing staff in public health services

Purpose: The present study aimed to evaluate mental health and coping strategies among nursing staff in two public hospitals of Greece. Materials and methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 318 nurses working in two public hospitals in Attica, Greece from February 2017 to May 2017. Data were collected using the Patient Health Questionnaire-2 (PHQ-2), the Generalized Anxiety Disorder Questionnaire (GAD-2) and the Greek version of the Ways of Coping Questionnaire. The data were presented as mean and standard deviation and analyzed through student tâ“test, chi-square, and descript_ive statistics using SPSS Version 21.0. The significance level was accepted as P values <0.05. Results: Data analysis revealed that 44% of nurses were suffering from depression and 40.3% from anxiety, with the type of hospital (p≤ 0.001) and marital status (p = 0.031) affecting stress levels. Conclusions: Working in mental health hospital and married nurses were the main risk factors for manifestation of anxiety/depression symptoms among nursing staff. Individual nurse characteristics, such as working experience as well as working environment (general and mental health hospital) were found to be associated with the nurses’ coping strategies in their attempt to deal with their work.