Nurse Blake on Mental Health Treatment and the Nurses Who Inspired Code Calm

Editor’s note: Nurse Blake partnered with Nurse.org to promote the 2025 State of Nursing Survey cited in this article and has contributed other articles to Nurse.org. Blake says proceeds from the book go toward providing free copies to hospitals and nursing programs across the country through the Nurse Support Network, a nurse community he founded. The author attended Camp NurseCon in 2025 as a participant and educator. Nurse.org did not receive compensation for this article.

Nurse Blake has spent years making nurses laugh, building community, and creating spaces where healthcare workers can feel seen. Behind the comedy tours, NurseCon events, Camp NurseCon, and social media presence is a more personal story, one that inspired his newest project, Code Calm.

Blake previously spent 30 days in a mental health treatment facility. During that time, he disconnected from his phone, worked through past trauma, took part in therapy, mindfulness, and group sessions, and focused on his own healing.

One detail from that experience stayed with him: the first three other patients he met were also nurses.

“Here we were, people who had spent so much of our lives taking care of others, and we all needed help ourselves,” Blake told Nurse.org.

That realization became part of the inspiration for Code Calm, a book written for nurses dealing with burnout, trauma, compassion fatigue, mental health struggles, boundaries, and the emotional weight of caring for others.

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The book’s full title is Code Calm: A Nurse’s Guide To Surviving and Thriving. Its Amazon description speaks directly to nurses who feel overwhelmed, out of control, or close to quitting after one more bad shift, describing the book as a practical, compassionate guide for challenges nursing school may not have prepared them for.

Blake collaborated with 10 other nurses and one paramedic to bring the book to life. Each chapter addresses a different part of the emotional load nurses carry.

• Chapter 1, “Finding My Purpose in Nursing,” by Danyel Portillo, BSN, RN, explores purpose beyond degrees, titles, and career milestones, and how to reconnect with what keeps you going when you feel tired or uncertain.
• Chapter 2, “The Weight of Caring,” by Giovanna Navarro, BSN, RN, looks at compassion fatigue and what happens when nurses keep caring for others without getting the care they need.
• Chapter 3, “The Art of Self-Care,” by Jennifer Herrmeyer, BSN, RN, CEN, CPEN, TCRN, and Kasey Pacheco-Moran, BSN, RN, HNB-BC, addresses two of the biggest obstacles to self-care, time and guilt, and what self-care really means.
• Chapter 4, “Healthy Relationships In & Out of Work,” by Carolyn Harmon, BSN, RN, examines how the demands of nursing can affect relationships at work and at home.
• Chapter 5, “Building Your Mental Health Toolkit,” by James C. Boomhower, MS, LMHC-A, FP-C; Shelby Jones, MSN, RN; and Kasey Pacheco-Moran, BSN, RN, HNB-BC, offers ways to recognize emotions, take needed breaks, and understand what your mind and body are asking for.
• Chapter 6, “It’s Not Failure, It’s Physiology,” by Giovanna Navarro, BSN, RN, and Wendy Garvin Mayo, DNP, APRN, ANP-BC, explains stress as something happening in the body, not a personal shortcoming.
• Chapter 7, “The Shift Worker’s Guide to Better Sleep,” by Maggie Aime, MSN, RN, tackles one of nursing’s most persistent challenges: sleeping while the rest of the world is awake.
• Chapter 8, “The Power of Emotional Intelligence,” by Wendy Garvin Mayo, DNP, APRN, ANP-BC, and Tiffany Gibson, MSN, RN, NPD-BC, CPN, looks at how self-awareness and compassion shape the way nurses care for themselves and connect with others.
• Chapter 9, “Recognizing and Healing From Trauma,” by Jennifer Herrmeyer, BSN, RN, CEN, CPEN, TCRN, focuses on the experiences nurses may keep carrying long after a shift ends.
• Chapter 10, “Balancing Work, Life, and Everything in Between,” by Jennifer Herrmeyer, BSN, RN, CEN, CPEN, TCRN, and Kasey Pacheco-Moran, BSN, RN, HNB-BC, explores what it means to care for yourself in a profession that often glorifies exhaustion and sacrifice.

The book was edited by Margaret “Maggie” Veloski, BSN, MBA, RN, and Jennifer Herrmeyer, BSN, RN, CEN, CPEN, TCRN.

Code Calm arrives at a time when burnout, staffing strain, and mental health concerns remain major issues across the nursing profession.

Nurse.org’s 2025 State of Nursing Survey, which included more than 6,000 nurses, found that 57% reported feeling burned out, while only 33% said staffing at their workplace was adequate. Although 69% said nursing was still worth it, fewer than half, 49%, said they would recommend the profession to others. In the 2026 survey, 48% said their mental health and stress had gotten worse over the past year, 42% said staffing on their unit had worsened, and the share who would recommend a nursing career slipped to 47%.

Outside research points in the same direction. In a 2025 Joyce University survey of 1,000 U.S. nurses, 74% said they had felt emotionally exhausted from work multiple times a week in the past month, and 53% said they had seriously considered leaving the profession at least monthly over the previous six months. One in four Gen Z nurses said they had access to employer-provided mental health resources but chose not to use them because of concerns about confidentiality or possible effects on their careers.

Blake’s willingness to discuss his own treatment publicly adds a prominent voice to ongoing conversations about mental health stigma in nursing and the difficulty many nurses face when asking for support.

In an email interview with Nurse.org, Nurse Blake opened up about his 30-day mental health treatment experience, the stigma nurses still face, and what he hopes readers take away from Code Calm. His responses are presented below in his own words.

1. What did your experience in treatment make you realize about nurses and what we hide while caring for others?

In the summer of 2024, I checked myself into a mental health rehab facility for 30 days. What stuck out to me the most was that the first three other patients I met were also nurses. Here we were, people who had spent so much of our lives taking care of others, and we all needed help ourselves.

Being around them helped me feel less alone. I didn’t have to explain everything about being a nurse for them to understand. It also made me think about how many of us are struggling in ways our coworkers would never know. You can show up, take care of your patients, make people laugh, and still go home and have a really hard time.

I knew that from my own life, but meeting those nurses made it feel bigger than just my experience. Those connections stayed with me after I left and became part of the inspiration for Code Calm. I wanted other nurses to feel that same relief of hearing someone else say, “I’ve felt that, too. You’re not alone.”

2. What are we still not being honest enough about?

Unfortunately, there’s still a lot of stigma around admitting you’re struggling emotionally or mentally, especially in nursing where everyone tells us we need to be “resilient.” We witness death, grief, and things that stay with us long after a shift ends, but we’re expected to keep going because another patient needs us. That makes it hard to say, “I’m not okay,” without feeling like you’re somehow failing at your job. So we keep showing up and telling everyone we’re fine, even when we’re not.

Jennifer Herrmeyer and Kasey Pacheco-Moran put it this way in Code Calm: “In a culture that glorifies exhaustion and productivity, self-care becomes both an act of resistance and restoration. For nurses, it is a revolutionary shift to choose presence over perfection, and sustainability over sacrifice.”

That really speaks to how much we’ve normalized giving until we have nothing left. Taking a break or asking for help shouldn’t make us question whether we’re good nurses. I want us to be able to say, “This is affecting me,” before we reach a crisis. And I want employers to take that seriously by providing access to support, and a workplace where being honest feels safe.

3. When did you realize that being the funny one or the strong one doesn’t protect you from struggling?

Checking myself into treatment really brought that home for me. There’s a strange feeling that comes with being someone people turn to for a laugh when you’re struggling yourself. You can start to feel like you owe everyone the version of you they’re expecting. Being honest meant letting people see more of me than that.

I still want to make nurses laugh, because we absolutely need that. But I also try to bring my own experiences into my shows, including the funny parts and the hard parts. Sometimes we’re laughing about something ridiculous, and sometimes I’m sharing something really personal. I’m comfortable making room for both. If someone leaves having laughed all night but also feels a little less alone because of something I shared, that means a lot to me.

4. Is helping nurses feel less alone the bigger purpose behind what you’re building?

Yes, absolutely. As much as I love comedy, I also love advocacy. I’ve always cared about speaking up and bringing people together around something that matters.

This is one of the reasons I created NurseCon at Sea, the Ultimate Nursing Conference. I wanted to build a community where nurses feel safe being themselves, where they can learn, and have fun. It’s a chance to get to know each other beyond our job titles, share what we’re going through, and make connections that last beyond the sailing. We spend so much time being responsible for other people that having a safe space to just be yourself matters.

The book was another way to create that connection. Someone might never come to one of my shows or on NurseCon at Sea, but hopefully they could find a copy in their break room and read a story that makes them feel understood. That’s why my goal is to get Code Calm into every hospital and nursing school, so it’s there when someone needs some support.

5. What do you hope a struggling nurse hears through this book, and what still needs to change?

I hope they hear, “You’re not alone, and you deserve to care for yourself, too.” You can care deeply about your patients and still be exhausted. You can love nursing and question whether you can keep doing it. Those feelings can exist together, and you should be able to talk about them without feeling ashamed.

Code Calm brought together 11 nurses and one paramedic to share honest stories and practical tools. My hope is that readers recognize something of themselves in those pages and find something that helps, whether that’s words for what they’ve been feeling or the encouragement to tell someone they’re struggling.

Within the profession, a lot needs to change to put more focus on our mental health as nurses. Unfortunately, I don’t think we can sit back and rely on hospitals and organizations to save us. They do, however, have a responsibility to do better, and we should keep demanding that. In the meantime, we have to look out for ourselves and each other. That means being honest when we’re struggling, checking in on the coworker who seems fine, and helping each other find support beyond what our workplace offers. And that’s the reason why I wanted to create Code Calm. Huge shoutout to all the authors and editors who helped me bring this book and idea to life!!!

That same focus on connection and nurse well-being extends beyond Code Calm. Blake also created Camp NurseCon, a more intimate retreat-style experience centered on education, community, and helping nurses step away from the demands of the profession.

I had the opportunity to attend Camp NurseCon last year as both a participant and educator. The experience felt very different from a traditional nursing conference. Educational sessions focused heavily on topics like burnout, mental health, self-care, and reconnecting with purpose, but what stood out most was the sense of community. By the end of the event, many of us were emotional in the best way, leaving with stronger connections and, for a lot of us, a renewed sense of readiness to face some of the challenges that come with nursing.

Rather than focusing only on surface-level wellness, Code Calm addresses trauma, compassion fatigue, sleep, relationships, emotional intelligence, mental health, boundaries, and the broader realities nurses carry both on and off the job.

That broader focus reflects much of Blake’s work outside the book.

He has continued touring as a comedian while also expanding NurseCon at Sea and other nurse-focused events that combine education, connection, and community. Those efforts increasingly center not only on making nurses laugh, but also on giving them spaces where they can step outside the role of caregiver.

The book was released September 21. One contributing author shared that it reached #7 on Kindle’s Stress Management bestseller list during its first week and also appeared on Amazon’s Motivational Self-Help bestseller list.

Blake is already working toward his goal of getting copies directly into nurses’ hands. He said proceeds from early orders allowed him to make rounds around Orlando and distribute more than 150 free copies to nurses and nursing students.

Code Calm is available on Amazon is available in paperback and Kindle.

Nurses spend their careers taking care of everyone else. Code Calm is built around a reminder that they deserve support, honesty, and care too.

🤔 What do you think needs to change to better support nurses’ mental health and prevent burnout? Tell us in the comments.