BETWEEN CARING AND FALLING ILL: A LITERATURE REVIEW ON THE MENTAL HEALTH AND QUALITY OF LIFE OF NURSING PROFESSIONALS IN HOSPITAL SETTINGS

Abstract

Introduction: The mental health of nursing professionals working in hospital settings has become an increasingly relevant public health concern, due to chronic work overload, continuous exposure to suffering and death, and insufficient organizational support faced by these workers. Objective: to analyze and synthesize the scientific evidence available in the literature regarding the factors influencing the quality of life and mental health of nursing professionals working in hospital settings. Method: this is an integrative literature review, with searches conducted in the SciELO, PubMed, and LILACS databases, using combined DeCS/MeSH descriptors through the Boolean operators AND and OR (mental health, nursing professionals, hospital nursing, quality of life, professional burnout, burnout, anxiety, depression, work overload, and working conditions), covering the period from 2022 to 2025, in Portuguese. Selection occurred in three stages, namely: reading of titles, reading of abstracts, and, finally, reading of full texts, with independent data extraction by two researchers and disagreement resolution by a third. Results: the twelve included studies indicated that work overload, inadequate staffing, and insufficient organizational support are the main occupational stressors, associated with relevant prevalences of anxiety, depression, and Burnout Syndrome, especially in high-complexity settings. Individual coping strategies proved useful but insufficient when not accompanied by structured institutional interventions. Final considerations: the findings confirm the hypothesis that chronic overload and insufficient organizational support are associated with the mental illness of hospital nursing staff, reinforcing the need for institutional policies that combine individual psychological support with structural changes in working conditions.