A nursing helpline at risk of closure has appealed for ‘urgent’ donations to continue providing vital mental wellbeing services to nurses and midwives.
Nurse Lifeline, set up during the pandemic to provide peer support services for nurses, is seeking financial support to keep up with rising demand.
It has launched a new appeal called ‘Be A Lifeline’ to help raise urgently needed money – with the charity warning that without long-term funds nurses calling will have ‘no-one to turn to’.
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This comes as latest statistics from the Office for National Statistics show the suicide rate across the general population is at its highest level in 25 years in England and Wales.
According to Nurse Lifeline, the female suicide rate is currently 23% higher among nurses than compared to the general population.
Teresa Griffiths, chair of Nurse Lifeline, told Nursing in Practice that nurses and midwives ‘routinely’ call the support line, with complaints of feeling ‘exhausted, burnt out, demoralised and struggling with both their mental and physical health’.
Some nurses calling the service have also considered or attempted taking their own life, Ms Griffiths said.
‘Nursing has never been an easy profession, but the current demands and challenges within healthcare today as well as our own profession are rapidly becoming overwhelming,’ she said.
She stressed that nurses needed ‘a safe space to reflect and decompress when personal and professional struggles start to impact our emotional wellbeing and mental health’.
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‘And that is where services like Nurse Lifeline are so vital in supporting the resilience of both individual nurses and the whole nursing workforce,’ added Ms Griffiths.
The charity added: ‘Any donation can be the lifeline that the charity needs to ensure their peer-support services remain available for those who need them most.
‘The charity is concerned that without long-term funds, they will not thrive and that callers will have no-one to turn to.’
The campaign comes as a recently published culture review into the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), found that sixteen nurses had died by suicide while under, or after, a fitness to practice investigation by the regulator.
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The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) also revealed over the summer that there had been a 54% increase in the number of nursing staff seeking support for suicidal thoughts over a six-month period.
For immediate support in a crisis please call The Samaritans on 116 123, or Nurse Lifeline on 0808 801 0455.
