Saturday, 15 January 2005 - 12:00 PM

This presentation is part of: Poster Session II

Occupational stress among mental health care providers: The impact of working with persons with severe mental illness

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between the degree of involvement of mental health service providers with clients who suffer from severe mental illness and serious behavioral problems and workers’ role strain and emotional exhaustion. The study advanced several hypotheses: the more the demand for mental health practitioners to provide services to clients who suffer from severe mental illness and serious behavioral problems the more they will experience role stressors and emotional exhaustion. It was further hypothesized that workers’ educational level would influence negatively workers’ perceptions about working with this type of client population. Method: Data was collected from 458 mental health practitioners working in mental health agencies and club houses in New York State. Each respondent completed a self-administered anonymous questionnaire that included demographic questions, role conflict, role ambiguity, emotional exhaustion, social support, type of job activities (i.e., counseling, concrete and advocacy services) and clients’ characteristics scales. A 65% response rate was achieved. Results: Examinations of Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients indicate that mental health care providers are negatively affected by working with clients who suffer from severe mental illness and serious behavioral problems. Workers with higher levels of education (MSWs) were found to be more conflicted and emotionally exhausted than those with lower levels of education (i.e., undergraduates). Ethnic differences were also found to influence workers’ emotional exhaustion. Caucasians had higher levels of emotional exhaustion than African American and Latino workers. Multiple regression analyses were conducted to predict role conflict and emotional exhaustion. Hierarchical regression analyses reveal that severity of clients’ mental illness as well as other job characteristics (i.e., social support, extent of performing concrete and advocacy services) significantly contribute to role conflict and emotional exhaustion when controlling for demographic predictors. Implications for practice: These findings underscore the importance of educating and preparing social work students both in graduate and undergraduate programs for the realistic roles and demands expected when working with clients with severe mental illness in outpatient mental health organizations. It is also suggested that social work schools re-evaluate the need to concentrate and expend undergraduate education as these workers may be more effective when working with special types of client population. Other suggestions include the provision of quality supervision, and employing mental health consumers as they may be more committed and less prone to stress when working with this client population.

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