Burnout, personal and secondary trauma among mental health care professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The psychiatric community is beginning to document the psychological effects of the COVID-19 pan-demic upon individuals with and without a preexisting psychiatric disorder. As the demand for mental health services is increasing, there are concerns about the wellbeing of mental health professionals (MHPs) as past research has highlighted problems with therapist burnout, anxiety compassion fatigue and secondary trauma when exposed to high rates of stress, increased workload, and isolation.METHODS: MHPs were recruited from two listserves and completed a questionnaire that included demographic ques-tions, stress-related questions as measured by the Impact of Event Scale - Revised (IES-R), actual amounts of supervision as measured by the Coping Strategies Inventory (CSI), counselor burnout as measured by the Counselor Burnout Inven -tory (CBI), and secondary trauma as measured by the Professional Quality of Life Scale (ProQOL). RESULTS: We utilized a 3-stage hierarchical regression to evaluate what variables predicted trauma in MHPs and found that counselor burnout and secondary trauma explained a significant amount of the variance in predicting trauma as measured by the IES-R. CONCLUSIONS: MHPs are experiencing personal trauma, secondary trauma, and burnout while trying to provide men-tal health services during the pandemic. More research is needed to fully understand what mental health professionals can engage in to mitigate the effects of burnout and trauma.