Mental Health & Addiction Treatment for Healthcare Workers

Why healthcare workers wait too long to get help

You spend your days taking care of everyone else, and it is easy to tell yourself that what you are feeling is just the job. Compassion fatigue, repeated exposure to death and suffering, 12-hour shifts, short staffing, and the pressure never to make a mistake add up. Studies consistently find higher rates of depression, anxiety, PTSD symptoms, and substance use among nurses and physicians than in the general population, and lower rates of actually seeking treatment. The reasons we hear most often are fear for your license, worry that colleagues will find out, and simply having no time.

We built this page to answer those concerns directly, because we treat healthcare workers from Lahey, Emerson, Lowell General, Mass General Brigham, Beth Israel Lahey, and community practices across the area every week.

What we treat

Healthcare workers come to Forrest for depression, anxiety and panic, PTSD and trauma from critical incidents or the pandemic years, burnout that has progressed into a clinical condition, and substance use, most commonly alcohol and prescription medications, including diverted medications. Many people are dealing with more than one of these at once, and our dual diagnosis program treats them together rather than one at a time.

How treatment works around a clinical schedule

Every program at Forrest is outpatient, so you sleep at home. Evening IOP meets after typical day shifts and is the most common choice for staff who are still working. Daytime IOP fits people on nights or rotating schedules. Day treatment (PHP) is for when you need more structure and are taking leave; we help with FMLA and short-term disability paperwork. You will have a dedicated therapist, a psychiatric provider for medication management, and groups with other working adults.

Your license and your privacy

Seeking treatment voluntarily is protected health information. We do not report to employers, hospitals, or licensing boards. If you are already working with a professional health monitoring program such as the Massachusetts Physician Health Services (PHS) or the Substance Addiction Recovery Program (SARP) for nurses, we can coordinate documentation and attendance verification with your consent, and we are familiar with what those programs require. If you are worried about whether to self-report, we will talk through it with you before you decide anything.

Trauma-focused therapies

Our clinicians use EMDR, CBT, and DBT skills to address critical-incident stress and cumulative trauma. For clinicians, we pay particular attention to moral injury, the distress that comes from situations where you could not provide the care you knew a patient needed, because it responds to different approaches than classic PTSD.

Programs

Frequently asked questions