Are you burnt out?

There are considerable consequences of burnout for organizations, therapists, and their clients. In addition to subjective feelings of exhaustion and despair, therapists experiencing burnout are at greater risk for major mental and physical health problems. Organizations where therapist burnout is common are likely to observe greater absenteeism and employee turnover. Lastly, clients of burnt out therapists are likely to receive less efficient and effective care, further straining the mental health care system.

A number of burnout intervention strategies have been tested. These strategies generally come in two varities: organizational and personal. Organizational strategies seek to reduce therapist burnout by changing factors at the organizational level. Examples include increasing job training and other resources for therapists and offering workshops to improve cohesion among coworkers.

Personal strategies seek to help individual therapists reduce their experience of burnout, typically through skills training such as relaxation, cognitive restructuring, and mindfulness. Additionally, there have been attempts at combined burnout interventions that utilize organizational change strategies in conjunction with individual skills training, although the magnitude of this kind of intervention makes it difficult to achieve.

The research on therapist burnout strategies is not encouraging. A recent meta-analysis examining the past 35 years of research on burnout indicated these personal and organizational strategies result in small positive improvements (Dreison et al., 2018). The authors conclude that the field has made “limited progress” in helping therapists prevent and alleviate burnout.