By Helene Waters first published December 28, 2025 by Cheese & Jam

Introduction

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare workers were applauded from balconies, praised as heroes, and held up as symbols of strength and sacrifice. But once the clapping stopped, many were left standing in the wreckage—exhausted, traumatised, and profoundly changed.

While female medical professionals rightly deserve recognition for the immense burden they carried, there is a quieter, often overlooked story beneath the surface:

men in medicine were expected to endure without complaint.

In a society that still tells men to “just deal with it,” many male doctors, nurses, paramedics, and frontline workers absorbed relentless trauma in silence—moving from hero to hollow.

The Pandemic Reality Inside the Medical System

COVID did not simply stretch healthcare systems—it broke them.

Medical professionals faced:

⚰️Mass patient deaths, often without family present

🤕Repeated moral injury from impossible decisions

🦠Fear of infecting loved ones

📋Extreme staff shortages and relentless workloads

😷Inadequate PPE during early waves

🚨A constant sense of hyper-vigilance

For months—and in many cases years—there was no decompression, no processing, no recovery.

Why Men Were Hit Differently

This is not about suffering more.

It’s about suffering differently.

1. Emotional Suppression Was Expected

Men in healthcare were often:

Seen as the “strong ones”

Expected to keep going without breaking

Relied upon during crises without being checked on emotionally

Where women were allowed—and encouraged—to talk, cry, or seek support, many men felt they had to hold the line.

Strength was assumed. Vulnerability was not invited.

2. Trauma Was Internalised, Not Expressed

Male medical professionals were far more likely to:

🗃️Compartmentalise trauma

🤐Avoid discussing emotional distress

🤫Downplay symptoms of burnout or PTSD

🤡Use humour, stoicism, or detachment as coping mechanisms

This internalisation didn’t erase the trauma—it buried it.

And buried trauma does not disappear.

It resurfaces as anxiety, rage, numbness, addiction, or collapse.

The Psychological Fallout

Studies conducted post-COVID show alarming trends among male healthcare workers:

⚠️Higher rates of burnout

⚠️Increased alcohol and substance use

⚠️Elevated risk of PTSD symptoms

⚠️Significant rise in depression and suicidal ideation

Yet men were less likely to seek therapy, access mental health resources, or disclose distress—especially within professional environments.

Why?

Because admitting struggle felt like professional failure.

From Applause to Abandonment

When the crisis phase ended, support systems quietly disappeared.

The messaging shifted from:

“You’re heroes”

to

“It’s time to get back to normal.”

But for many men in medicine:

Normal no longer existed

Emotional numbness had replaced empathy

Exhaustion had become chronic

Identity had fractured

They were expected to return to work unchanged—as if what they witnessed hadn’t altered them at a cellular level.

The Impact on Female Medical Professionals

Female healthcare workers, whose experiences should never be diminished, faced immense trauma too:

⭕Emotional labour

⭕Grief overload

⭕Caregiver burnout

⭕Moral injury

Many women sought peer support, counselling, or community validation—often because it was socially acceptable to do so.

Men, by contrast, frequently stood beside them in the same storm—yet were given fewer emotional permissions.

This isn’t a competition of pain.

It’s an exposure of imbalance in who is allowed to process it openly.

The Cost of “Just Dealing With It”

When men suppress trauma long-term, the consequences are severe:

❗Emotional disconnection from partners and families

❗Increased irritability or emotional volatility

❗Withdrawal from relationships

❗Decline in empathy or compassion fatigue

❗Increased suicide risk

Globally, men account for approximately 75% of suicide deaths—and healthcare professionals already sit within a high-risk category.

The silence is not harmless.

It is lethal.

What Needs to Change

1. Trauma-Informed Support for Men

Healthcare systems must:

⭕Normalise male emotional expression

⭕Provide confidential, stigma-free mental health support

⭕Actively check in with male staff—not just during crisis

2. Redefining Strength in Medicine

Strength is not endurance without collapse.

Strength is recognising when the cost is too high.

3. Language Matters

Men need to hear:

🗣️“You don’t have to carry this alone.”

🗣️“This reaction is normal.”

🗣️“Seeking help does not diminish your competence.”

Conclusion

The pandemic didn’t just create heroes.

It created survivors—many of whom are still bleeding internally.

Men in the medical field did not emerge unscathed.

They were expected to absorb trauma, maintain function, and return to service without pause.

From hero to hollow—this is the untold story.

If we truly value the men who held the line, then the conversation must continue after the applause ends.

Because silence isn’t resilience.

And surviving shouldn’t mean suffering alone.

 

CategoriesAdvocacy, Collaboration, COVID 19, Fallout after COVID, Men’s mental health, Mental health, Taboo topics, Uncategorized, Uncomfortable conversations, Woman supporting menTagsBreaking the silence, collaboration, Covid, COVID-19, Difficult conversations, Emotional Wellbeing, Men’s mental health, Mental health awareness, Society, Taboo topic, Trauma

Fatherhood and Emotional Expression

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3 thoughts on “From Hero to Hollow: How COVID Shattered Men in the Medical Field”



Carol

December 30, 2025 at 4:55 am

Very well written and I agree 100 percent! I am a female RN who worked through the entire Covid epidemic here in the USA, at a trauma one hospital!
I witnessed firsthand the chaos, lack of PPE, fear of dying, sadness of watching patients die alone, whole families suffering and dying, the unknown, vaccinations, complications, staff turn over crisis, nurses leaving the profession, etc.
I do know that our work offered free mental health services for staff, but I am not sure of how many men sought this compared to female staff.
I do know that both sexes were burnt out, numb, exhausted, uncompensated, and were expected to return to working like before Covid right afterwards!!! This to me and many other healthcare professionals is unacceptable. No matter what they tell you, healthcare is a business, bottom line….it’s about the profit made, and how much to top dogs get paid. Nurses are underpaid for what they are expected to do, their responsibility to patients lives, the PTSD they all suffer from their work environment, and their corporate employers who keep pulling more and more onto their already filled plates! This system is unsustainable….no wonder their are so may broken nurses out their today.

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Cheese & Jam

January 1, 2026 at 5:07 pm

Thank you. Your input is greatly appreciated. Thank you for working so selflessly every single day.

Reply



Ndagha Mwanjabe

January 14, 2026 at 10:04 am

Being a strict parent it can turn into nightmare to kids

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