Copenhagen, 10 October 2025<\/p>\n
Doctors and nurses in Europe are working in conditions that harm their mental health and well-being, with a worrying proportion experiencing passive suicidal thoughts or thoughts of hurting themselves. That is the key finding of a landmark new WHO\/Europe survey released today on World Mental Health Day.<\/p>\n
The Mental Health of Nurses and Doctors (MeND) survey is the largest to date, with over 90\u00a0000 responses collected and analysed from all 27 countries of the European Union, plus Iceland and Norway. The findings, including country breakdowns, reveal the true cost of years of underinvestment in Europe\u2019s health systems and health workforce.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Key findings<\/p>\n
In the past year, 1 in 3 doctors and nurses experienced bullying or violent threats at work, and 10% experienced physical violence and\/or sexual harassment.<\/p>\n
One in 4 doctors work more than 50 hours per week. Meanwhile, nearly a third (32%) of doctors and a quarter (25%) of nurses are on temporary employment contracts, which is strongly linked to increased anxiety about job security.<\/p>\n
Among the most concerning findings is that 1 in 10 doctors and nurses said they had had thoughts of being \u201cbetter off dead\u201d or \u201churting themselves\u201d in the past 2 weeks. These so-called \u201cpassive\u201d suicidal thoughts are known to predict future suicidal behaviour.<\/p>\n
Such unsafe work is directly linked with poor mental health. Doctors and nurses who experience violence, work consistently long hours and work in shifts (especially at night) are much more likely to be depressed and anxious and to have suicidal thoughts. In fact, doctors and nurses show double the prevalence of suicidal thoughts compared to the general population.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe results of the MeND survey are a stark reminder that Europe\u2019s health systems are only as strong as the people who power them,\u201d said Dr Hans Henri P. Kluge, WHO Regional Director for Europe. \u201cOne in 3 doctors and nurses report depression or anxiety, and more than 1 in 10 have thought about ending their lives or hurting themselves. This is an unacceptable burden on those who care for us. It doesn\u2019t have to be this way.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can take concrete actions right now, like enforcing zero-tolerance for violence and harassment in health-care workplaces; reforming shift patterns and overtime to end the culture of work-till-exhaustion; reducing excessive workloads by investing in smarter recruitment and streamlined workflows, including leveraging the power of digital technologies like AI; and ensuring every health worker has access to confidential, stigma-free mental health support. At the same time, we must hold health leaders accountable for creating safe, supportive workplaces. Ultimately, the mental health crisis among our health workers is a health security crisis, threatening the integrity of our health systems.\u201d<\/p>\n
Driven by purpose despite the pressures<\/p>\n
Despite poor mental health and working conditions, 3 out of 4 doctors and 2 out of 3 nurses expressed a strong sense of purpose and meaning in their work and were mostly satisfied with their jobs. This suggests that health workers are passionate and motivated by their work but need tailored support to do their jobs and care for their patients effectively.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are physically and mentally exhausted, which unfortunately can sometimes lead to medical errors,\u201d said M\u00e9lanie Debarreix, a radiology resident from France. \u201cThese working conditions have a huge impact on our mental health and well-being. In France, among medical students, 66% have experienced a depressive episode and 21% have had suicidal thoughts over the past year \u2013 3 times more than the general population. The way to protect our mental health and well-being would first and foremost include the strict enforcement of the law concerning working hours or mandatory rest after on-call shifts, as well as the allocation of sufficient financial resources to allow us to practice in line with our values. We chose a path of humanity, but that does not mean we stop being human ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
The backbone of health care: its people<\/p>\n
Unsafe and unsupported working conditions are linked to stress, anxiety and depression among health workers \u2013 and this affects not just them, but also patients and society. Depending on the country, up to 40% of doctors and nurses with symptoms of depression reported taking sick leave in the past year. Between 11% and 34% of health workers said they were thinking about leaving their jobs. This loss of capacity can mean that patients face longer waits and reduced quality of care, and health systems lose vital staff. In the end, everyone pays the price.<\/p>\n
\u201cAcross Europe, the pressures faced by doctors and nurses may look different \u2013 whether it\u2019s long hours in one country or temporary contracts in another, or workplace violence in yet another \u2013 but the impact on mental health is universal,\u201d said Dr Natasha Azzopardi-Muscat, Director of Health Systems at WHO\/Europe. \u201cWe measure hospital capacity by counting beds, and surgical outcomes in survival rates \u2013 yet too often we fail to measure the well-being of those delivering care. These findings show that mental health must be treated as a core performance measure, just like patient safety or hospital capacity. The resilience of our health and care systems is only as good as the resilience of the women and men who dedicate their lives to caring for others.\u201d<\/p>\n
These findings add further weight to WHO\/Europe\u2019s 2022 \u201cTime to Act\u201d report, which concluded that recruitment of health and care workers is not keeping pace with rising demand, putting unbearable pressure on our health systems and health workers. Without action, Europe faces a projected shortage of 940\u00a0000 health workers by 2030.<\/p>\n
Improving working conditions would help reduce sick leave and discourage staff from leaving altogether, while also attracting more doctors and nurses to the profession. This would help ensure that Europe\u2019s health systems are fit for current and future demographic shifts and population needs, as well as better able to weather future health emergencies<\/p>\n
The report outlines 7 urgent policy actions that countries must take to improve working conditions and change organizational cultures, all of which can be achieved by repurposing existing resources. These are:<\/p>\n
demonstrate zero-tolerance for violence of any kindimprove shift predictability and flexibilitymanage overtime fairly and build positive workplace cultureaddress excessive workloadstrain and hold leaders accountableexpand access to mental health supportconduct regular monitoring and reporting of health worker well-being.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith Europe facing a shortage of nearly 1 million health workers by 2030, we cannot afford to lose them to burnout, despair or violence. Their well-being is not only a moral obligation \u2013 it is the foundation of safe, high-quality care for every patient,\u201d concluded Dr Kluge. \u201cLet this survey be a much-needed wake-up call to spur action.\u201d<\/p>\n
Notes to editors<\/p>\n
The MeND survey was funded under WHO\/Europe\u2019s project with the European Commission, \u201cAddressing mental health challenges in the European Union, Iceland and Norway\u201d. It ran from October 2024 to April 2025 and was disseminated via 6 European medical and nursing associations and their affiliated national associations. The total number of responses was approximately 120\u00a0000, with 90\u00a0171 valid responses included in the final analysis. Across the 29 responding countries, the response rate ranged from less than 1% to 34% depending on the profession, but the age and gender distributions broadly reflected that of the underlying health workforce population. The survey was cross-sectional, meaning that the observed associations cannot be assumed to be causal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Copenhagen, 10 October 2025 Doctors and nurses in Europe are working in conditions that harm their mental health…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190895,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-190894","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}