Better Work-Life Balance Linked to Stronger Mental Health in Nurses, Study Finds

Nurses around the world carry one of the most emotionally and physically demanding jobs in modern healthcare, and a new study from Türkiye adds fresh evidence about what may protect their minds under pressure. Researchers at the University of Health Sciences in Ankara examined how the balance between work, family, and personal life relates to mental health symptoms and psychological resilience in hospital nurses. Their findings, published in BMC Nursing, suggest that nurses who report a better equilibrium across these domains also report fewer psychological symptoms and greater capacity to bounce back from stress.

The study, led by İkbal Gedik and Belgin Varol from the Department of Psychiatric Nursing, was designed as a cross-sectional descriptive investigation conducted in accordance with the STROBE reporting guidelines, an international standard for observational research. A total of 300 nurses working in hospitals in Türkiye participated. The researchers gathered data through a personal information form alongside three validated instruments: the Work-Family-Life Balance Scale, which measures how well individuals manage the competing demands of professional and private life; the Brief Symptom Inventory, a screening tool that captures a broad range of psychological distress; and the Brief Resilience Scale, which assesses the ability to recover from adversity.

Statistical analysis combined descriptive statistics with inferential techniques, including independent samples t-tests, one-way analysis of variance, Pearson correlation, and hierarchical regression. This layered approach allowed the team not only to detect simple associations but also to test whether work-family-life balance and resilience each contributed independently to explaining variation in mental health symptoms once other factors were accounted for. The hierarchical regression produced a final model explaining 26.3 percent of the variance in mental health symptoms, a substantial share for research in this field and an indication that both balance and resilience are meaningful correlates of nurses’ psychological wellbeing.

The correlation results formed a coherent pattern. Work-family-life balance showed a moderate negative correlation with mental health symptoms, meaning that nurses who reported greater difficulty balancing their roles tended to report more symptoms of psychological distress. Psychological resilience was also moderately and negatively correlated with mental health symptoms, so nurses with lower resilience reported more symptoms. In contrast, a moderate positive correlation emerged between work-family-life balance and resilience, suggesting that these two resources tend to travel together: nurses who manage their competing commitments well are also more likely to describe themselves as resilient.

From a theoretical standpoint, the findings align closely with the Conservation of Resources framework, a widely used model in occupational health psychology. According to this framework, people strive to obtain and protect valuable resources such as time, energy, and social support, and psychological strain arises when those resources are threatened or lost. For nurses, long shifts, understaffing, and emotionally intense patient care can rapidly deplete personal resources, leaving less capacity for family obligations and private life. The study’s results are consistent with the idea that maintaining balance preserves resources, which in turn supports resilience and buffers against the development of mental health symptoms.

The authors emphasize that the study’s cross-sectional design imposes an important limit on interpretation. Because all data were collected at a single point in time, the analysis can establish association but not causation. It remains possible that better balance protects mental health, but equally plausible that nurses with fewer symptoms find it easier to organize their lives, or that resilience and balance mutually reinforce each other in ways that only longitudinal research can untangle. The researchers explicitly call for future longitudinal and intervention studies to clarify the direction and nature of these relationships.

Even with that caveat, the practical implications are considerable. Nursing shortages and burnout have become pressing concerns for health systems globally, and mental health among nurses is not only a matter of individual wellbeing. As the authors note in their plain language summary, improving nurses’ mental health matters for the quality of patient care and for the sustainability of the healthcare system itself. A workforce that is psychologically depleted is more prone to error, absenteeism, and attrition, so understanding which factors correlate with better mental health has direct operational relevance for hospital administrators and policymakers.

The study also highlights the value of supportive work environments. The authors suggest that future research should evaluate whether supportive workplaces are associated with improvements in work-family-life balance, resilience, and mental health symptoms. In practical terms, this could include scheduling practices that respect family responsibilities, access to psychological support services, and organizational cultures that normalize conversations about stress. Because both balance and resilience were independently associated with fewer symptoms in the regression model, interventions targeting either one, or both in combination, could plausibly yield benefits, though testing such interventions empirically remains the necessary next step.

Methodologically, the study demonstrates the usefulness of combining brief, validated instruments in busy clinical settings. The Brief Symptom Inventory offers a compact multidimensional picture of distress, the Brief Resilience Scale isolates the specific construct of bouncing back rather than broader personality traits, and the Work-Family-Life Balance Scale captures the modern reality that workers juggle more than two domains, including personal time beyond family duties. Ethical approval came from the Ethics Committee of Çankırı Karatekin University in May 2025, and the researchers obtained electronic informed consent from all participants, who joined voluntarily and could withdraw at any time without penalty, in line with the Helsinki Declaration.

For the nursing profession, the message is both sobering and hopeful. Sobering, because the persistence of mental health symptoms among nurses confirms that occupational stress in hospitals continues to take a psychological toll. Hopeful, because the identified correlates, balance and resilience, are not fixed traits but targets that individuals and organizations can work on. The authors, who report no competing interests and received no external funding for the study, frame their work as a foundation for that effort: a clear, quantified snapshot of how the architecture of daily life relates to the inner lives of the people who staff the wards. As health systems search for ways to retain and sustain their nursing workforce, evidence that a manageable equilibrium between work, family, and personal life goes hand in hand with fewer symptoms and stronger resilience offers a concrete direction for both research and policy.

Subject of Research: Work-family-life balance, psychological resilience, and mental health symptoms among hospital nurses

Article Title: Examining the relationship between work-family-life balance, mental health symptoms and psychological resilience in nurses: a cross-sectional study

Article References: Gedik, İ., & Varol, B. (2026). Examining the relationship between work-family-life balance, mental health symptoms and psychological resilience in nurses: a cross-sectional study. BMC Nursing. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-026-05405-1

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12912-026-05405-1

Keywords: nurses, work-family-life balance, psychological resilience, mental health symptoms, occupational stress, cross-sectional study, BMC Nursing, Türkiye, occupational health psychology, burnout, healthcare workforce, Conservation of Resources