May 2025: Mental Health Awareness Month
May is Mental Health Awareness Month — a perfect opportunity to reflect on the emotional well-being of those who dedicate their lives to caring for others.
For ICU professionals, mental health is not just a personal matter — it’s essential to professional performance and patient care. The intense pressures of working in critical care, making life-or-death decisions, and supporting critically ill patients and their families can lead to chronic stress, emotional exhaustion, and burnout.
Left unaddressed, these challenges can affect not only the well-being of the caregiver but also the quality of care they provide and the dynamics within their teams.
To shed light on these important issues, the ESICM NEXT Committee has developed a powerful and relatable comic story, specifically created to highlight the mental health struggles faced by ICU teams — and to inspire conversations and solutions around them.
At the heart of the story is the 3R framework: Recognise, reverse, resilience.
🔹 Recognise early signs of stress and burnout before they escalate
🔹 Reverse them with timely interventions and a proactive approach to mental health
🔹 Resilience is the goal — achieved through shared experiences, coping strategies, and strong support networks
This month, we invite you to read and share the ESICM comic, designed to spark conversation and encourage change within the intensive care community. Because taking care of mental health is just as important as taking care of patients.
Let’s raise awareness, break the stigma, and build a stronger, more resilient ICU culture!
Together, we are intensive care!
