Usually it’s the doctor who asks how you feel, it’s time to ask how the mental condition of Polish medical professionals is. A report by the Polish Women in Medicine Foundation, published in 2025, provided extensive data on the mental health of medical professionals and medical students. The report was developed to publicize the problem of the medical community. The mental well-being of male and female medics is not our concern!
What is the mental condition of Polish medics?
The foundation’s report was based on a survey of 2,164 health-related participants, most of whom were in the medical profession. As many as 1,487 of those surveyed received such a test score, which indicates mental imbalance. The survey provided data on the prevalence of sadness and feelings of unhappiness. Is this worrying? Yes, if the condition is chronic or accompanied by other symptoms. Certainly, it is disturbing that almost one in seven people participating in the survey had end-of-life thoughts within the last 30 days. Medics suffer, and most often at the threshold of their careers, when the emotional burden seems greatest and the responsibility for such an important resource of another human being as health appears. Factors that threaten mental health and well-being appear as early as the stage of acquiring medical knowledge, mental difficulties also occur at this time.
Risk factors of the crisis
What negatively affects the mental health of medics?
People working in the medical profession face time pressures, high demands, difficult decisions. They suffer from overload, violence from patients and their families, discrimination and exposure to suffering and death. Shift work and excessive working hours impair well-being and make life balance suffer. The study on which the report is based shows that working more than 48 hours a week clearly adversely affects the mental health of medical professionals. Stressors are also experienced by medical students, risk factors for a mental health crisis are an imbalance between study and leisure time, experiencing mistreatment from instructors. Among the stressors are uncertainty about one’s professional future and anxiety about finances (until one graduates, one cannot work in the medical profession). Entering with high levels of stress into a professional role in which perfection and infallibility are expected is quite a burden.
Necessary assistance of a specialist
Do medics use psychological help?
Medics begin their work equipped with a wealth of knowledge, trained on how to help others. However, they are under-equipped with the skills to manage their own emotions, to deal adaptively with stress, which will not be absent on the professional path. Getting help is maturity, strength and responsible behavior, yet going to a psychiatrist or psychologist for help is still marked by a social stigma, including in the medical community. From the report, we learn that 56.3% of respondents use specialized help, mainly a psychiatrist and psychotherapist. That’s good, but it’s still just over half of those in need. Those who chose not to seek help declared a belief that they could manage on their own. This may be a sign that using help still passes for weakness. But does one function and work productively in a bad mental state? It certainly doesn’t do anyone any good.
VR TierOne for medical
Can VR goggles be helpful to the psyche of a medic?
We recognize the scale of the mental health problem in various social and professional circles. We have written with concern for the mental health of medical professionals in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, which you can read about here. We are promoting a virtual form of support because brief interventions using VR goggles can be important for maintaining mental health. VR TierOne GO therapeutic and VR TierOne GO relaxation solutions are making their way to hospitals, but also to schools and universities to power and improve the mental health support system there. Future as well as current medics should have access to solutions that are free of stigma and available continuously in the workplace and learning environments. Professional virtual support improves well-being and contributes to changes that interrupt chronic stress reactions. A VR TierOne session with a virtual therapist reduces stress, depression, anxiety, which has been scientifically proven. The VR TierOne GO relaxation goggles provide a distinctly different and friendly virtual environment that allows you to gain distance and relax in a short period of time, without disorganizing your busy medical schedule. Constant access to a virtual form of assistance can be a lifesaver in difficult times. The relaxation techniques used in therapy in the long run can protect against professional burnout, to which medics are at high risk.
VR-based therapeutic devices can provide real support for medical psychics.
