The influence of maladaptive coping modes, resilience, and job demands on emotional exhaustion in psychologists

Abstract

Although it is well established that emotion-focused coping is associated with burnout, the schema therapy model may improve the prediction of who is most vulnerable to using emotion-focused coping and what kinds of emotion-focused coping carry the greatest risk of burnout. It is also unknown the extent to which resilience might buffer against maladaptive coping in protecting against burnout. The present study investigated whether maladaptive coping modes would incrementally predict emotional exhaustion (EE) adjusting for resilience and whether resilience might moderate the effect of maladaptive coping on EE. The possible role of maladaptive coping as a mediator of job demands on EE was also explored. Four hundred and forty-three clinical and counselling psychologists completed online measures of job demands, EE, resilience, and maladaptive coping modes. The Detached Protector mode was associated with greater EE after adjusting for resilience. Bully and Attack mode was associated with greater EE when considered separately from other coping modes but associated with decreased EE when considered together. Resilience did not moderate the effect of job demands on EE, or the effect of coping modes on EE, except for Compliant Surrenderer. Coping modes only partially mediated the effect of job demands on EE accounting for 20% or less of its effect. Maladaptive coping modes appear to make independent contributions to the risk of EE and efforts to reduce burnout in psychologists should focus dually on increasing resilience-building practices and decreasing maladaptive coping.

Burnout and Psychological Wellbeing Among Psychotherapists: A Systematic Review

“…Secondly, eight studies have highlighted the significant role of intrapersonal variables as burnout predictors among psychotherapists, including predominantly personality traits (Mills and Huebner, 1998 ; Rzeszutek and Schier, 2014 ; Lee et al, 2019 ; George-Levi et al, 2020 ; Smout et al, 2021 ) and various stress coping styles (Wilkerson and Bellini, 2006 ; Ben-zur and Michael, 2007 ; Malinowski, 2013 ). Generally, traits related to negative emotionality (e.g., neuroticism, emotional reactivity) were burnout predictors, while those associated with emotional stability and high levels of subjectively perceived resources (e.g., resilience) were buffers against this syndrome in this occupation.…”