Workload, Work-Life Conflict, and Stress Amongst Mental Health Professionals: The Moderating Role of Segmentation Preference.

IF 2.7 2区心理学 Q2 PSYCHIATRY

Stress and Health Pub Date : 2025-08-01 DOI:10.1002/smi.70095

Ilona M McNeill, Eloisa Cullington

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Abstract

The nature of the mental health profession inherently puts its workers at risk of heightened psychological stress. This raises the importance of understanding why some mental health professionals show greater resilience when faced with common work stressors than others. One work stressor that has been consistently linked with stress is workload. Research has found that higher workload generally leads to greater work-life conflict, which, in turn, leads to greater stress. The current study aimed to test this mediation model amongst mental health professionals and examined how individuals' preference for segmentation versus integration of work and private life moderates the strength of the pathways in this mediation model. Research participants, consisting of 152 Australian mental health professionals aged 18-69 years (M = 37.58, SD = 12.12), voluntarily completed a 30-min survey capturing workload, work-life conflict, segmentation preference, and stress. In line with expectations, higher workload predicted greater stress via higher levels of work-life conflict. Furthermore, segmentation preference moderated the path between workload and work-life conflict as well as the path between work-life conflict and stress. Simple slopes analyses showed that a stronger (vs. weaker) preference for segmentation was associated with a stronger positive relationship between workload and work-life conflict as well as a stronger positive relationship between work-life conflict and stress. Segmentation preference may thus influence the workload-work-life conflict-stress relationship through two distinct mechanisms. Improving our understanding of such mechanisms facilitates creation of targeted strategies to reduce work-induced stress amongst mental health professionals.

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工作负荷、工作生活冲突与心理健康专业人员压力：分割偏好的调节作用

心理健康职业的本质使其工作人员面临心理压力加剧的风险。这就提出了理解为什么一些心理健康专业人员在面对常见的工作压力时比其他人表现出更大的适应力的重要性。一个一直与压力有关的工作压力源是工作量。研究发现，更高的工作量通常会导致更大的工作与生活冲突，从而导致更大的压力。本研究旨在在心理健康专业人员中测试这一中介模型，并研究个人对工作和私人生活的分割与整合的偏好如何调节这一中介模型中路径的强度。研究参与者包括152名18-69岁的澳大利亚心理健康专业人员（M = 37.58, SD = 12.12），他们自愿完成了一项30分钟的调查，调查内容包括工作量、工作-生活冲突、细分偏好和压力。与预期一致，更高的工作量预示着更大的压力，通过更高水平的工作与生活冲突。细分偏好对工作量与工作-生活冲突、工作-生活冲突与压力的关系具有调节作用。简单的斜率分析表明，更强的分割偏好（相对较弱）与工作量与工作-生活冲突之间的正相关关系以及工作-生活冲突与压力之间的正相关关系更强。因此，分段偏好可能通过两种不同的机制影响工作-工作-生活冲突-压力关系。增进我们对这些机制的了解，有助于制定有针对性的战略，以减少心理健康专业人员因工作而产生的压力。

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来源期刊

Stress and Health 医学-精神病学

CiteScore

6.40

自引率

4.90%

发文量

审稿时长

>12 weeks

期刊介绍： Stress is a normal component of life and a number of mechanisms exist to cope with its effects. The stresses that challenge man"s existence in our modern society may result in failure of these coping mechanisms, with resultant stress-induced illness. The aim of the journal therefore is to provide a forum for discussion of all aspects of stress which affect the individual in both health and disease. The Journal explores the subject from as many aspects as possible, so that when stress becomes a consideration, health information can be presented as to the best ways by which to minimise its effects.