Item request has been placed! ×
Item request cannot be made. ×
loading  Processing Request

What helps the helpers? Resilience and risk factors for general and profession-specific mental health problems in psychotherapists during the COVID-19 pandemic

Item request has been placed! ×
Item request cannot be made. ×
loading   Processing Request
  • Additional Information
    • Publication Date:
      2023
    • Collection:
      Max Planck Society: MPG.PuRe
    • Abstract:
      Introduction: Although the COVID-19 pandemic has severely affected wellbeing of at-risk groups, most research on resilience employed convenience samples. We investigated psychosocial resilience and risk factors (RFs) for the wellbeing of psychotherapists and other mental health practitioners, an under-researched population that provides essential support for other at-risk groups and was uniquely burdened by the pandemic. Method: We examined 18 psychosocial factors for their association with resilience, of which four were chosen due to their likely relevance specifically for therapists, in a cross-sectional multi-national sample (N = 569) surveyed between June and September 2020. Resilience was operationalized dimensionally and outcome-based as lower stressor reactivity (SR), meaning fewer mental health problems than predicted given a participant's levels of stressor exposure. General SR (SRG) scores expressed reactivity in terms of general internalizing problems, while profession-specific SR (SRS) scores expressed reactivity in terms of burnout and secondary trauma, typical problems of mental health practitioners. Results: Factors previously identified as RFs in other populations, including perceived social support, optimism and self-compassion, were almost all significant in the study population (SRG: 18/18 RFs, absolute βs = 0.16-0.40; SRS: 15/18 RFs, absolute βs = 0.19-0.39 all Ps < 0.001). Compassion satisfaction emerged as uniquely relevant for mental health practitioners in regularized regression. Discussion: Our work identifies psychosocial RFs for mental health practitioners' wellbeing during crisis. Most identified factors are general, in that they are associated with resilience to a wider range of mental health problems, and global, in that they have also been observed in other populations and stressor constellations.
    • File Description:
      application/pdf
    • Relation:
      info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/pmid/38164261; http://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-000E-2CCD-B; http://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-000F-40A0-3; http://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-000F-40A1-2
    • Online Access:
      https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1272199
      http://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-000E-2CCD-B
      http://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-000F-40A0-3
      http://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-000F-40A1-2
    • Rights:
      info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess ; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
    • Accession Number:
      edsbas.89FCB194