BRATTLEBORO, Vt. (WCAX) – The pandemic shed light on the issues health care and service workers faced dealing with their own mental health. Now, the Brattleboro Retreat is expanding a program to help more of those and other professionals.
“My diagnosis kind of has been things like PTSD, depression, anxiety. And more recently it was burnout, which is why that program for first responders, it really resonated with me,” said Marina Cesar, a large animal veterinarian who travels across New England to provide care. She says she struggles with her mental health and that as a health care provider, people can sometimes forget to check in on her when she’s feeling low. “The more you do, the more you are asked to do. You can easily get put into this, ‘Oh Marina will do it,’ you know, ‘She can’t say no.’ I do think that they think we are superhuman.”
Cesar learned about the Healthcare Professionals and First Responders program at the Brattleboro Retreat. It’s offered to people in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts and includes therapy sessions via Zoom as well as in-patient care for either four or six-week sessions.
during the pandemic — with the uptick in mental health struggles for service and care providers — the center decided to broaden its reach. The program expanded two years ago to include nurses, doctors, and other hospital professionals.
“Prior to the pandemic, we served police officers, firefighters, EMTs, veterans. During the pandemic, we had to close for a little while. Then, when we re-opened, we were seeing that we really need to exand our services and expand our scope. To include more nurses, more medical professionals,” said Jessica Tamulonis, a psychologist with the program. She says attorneys and veterinarians like Cesar have also joined the mix.
During the pandemic, the Brattleboro Retreat itself lost 50% of its nursing staff. Holly Galbraith, their director of nursing operations, — says there should be more programs like this for health care workers. “This is something that has been overlooked for years and years. The mental toll that it takes on someone witnessing trauma day in and day out. The pandemic sort of put a magnifying glass on it,” she said.