There’s a Mental Health Crisis Among Nurses

HELP FOR THE HELPERS –

Mar. 31, 2022 – On the morning of January 18, Joshua Paredes came home to an empty apartment. His roommate and good friend Michael Odell wasn’t there. They were both working as nurses – Paredes at the University of California, San Francisco hospital and Odell at Stanford Health Care – and initially, Paredes didn’t think much of his friend’s absence, since he typically came home a little later.

When he didn’t hear back, and Odell didn’t answer his call either, Paredes looked for his friend’s location on his phone – they shared locations with each other. It showed him on a highway that he never took to come home.

“So I kind of realized something was weird,” says Paredes. “When I found out that he left mid-shift, my first thought was he’s in crisis,” says John LeBlanc, a nurse at UCSF, and a good friend of Paredes and Odell. “Because it’s totally, completely out of character for him.”

Two days later, after a search by friends, volunteers and the police, the authorities found Odell’s body. While the investigation into his death is still ongoing, the evidence points to suicide. He was 27 years old. As the reality of his friend’s death has sunk in, Walujo says, he has felt sad, then angry at his friend, then angry at himself for not being able to help more. “It’s just been a roller coaster of emotions, honestly,” he says. Odell’s death was also a wake-up call for the many health care workers who heard about it.

The day that he disappeared, Paredes created a Facebook page called “Find Michael Odell” to ask volunteers to help. He also requested help on the Stanford nurses’ union Facebook page. He was surprised to see an outpouring of support and stories of personal struggles from fellow nurses.

“There’ve been people that reached out to me, they didn’t even know Michael,” says Paredes. “They just wanted me to know like, ‘I worked on this unit. I experienced this.’ I got one person telling me that his co-workers had to wheel him to the emergency room from the ICU at that hospital because he was having a breakdown.”If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (En Español: 1-888-628-9454; Deaf and Hard of Hearing: 1-800-799-4889) or the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741.