[Burnout, Secondary Traumatic Stress and Psychological Distress of Intervention Workers and Managers in the Community Sector in Quebec. Portrait of the Situation During the COVID-19 Pandemic].

Abstract

Objectives This article looks at emotional difficulties experienced by intervention workers and managers from three associations of community organizations (mental health, homelessness and for people with disabilities) in Quebec during the COVID-19 pandemic. More specifically, we document manifestations, sometimes concurrent, of burnout, secondary traumatic stress and psychological distress reported by participants, comparing participants who reported having a management role with those who did not. Method Analyses were conducted based on responses of almost 300 participants to an online questionnaire comprised of 140 items, including scales pertaining to psychosocial risks, professional life quality and psychological distress. Results Our results show that many participants experience emotional difficulties, often experiencing mid levels of burnout, secondary traumatic stress and mid or high levels of psychological distress, or sometimes a combination of two or three difficulties concomitantly. The odds were higher for participants with management roles to obtain a higher score for burnout and psychological distress than for those who did not have a management role. Conclusion Contrary to an observed tendency of focusing on the bettering of individual adaptation skills to stressful situations, emotional difficulties experienced by intervention workers are a collective issue that therefore requires collective solutions. Two limits of this study are the question of the sample's representativity, as well as the way our results could reflect or not the situation of intervention workers in the public sector in Quebec or elsewhere in Canada.