Reduce the Impact of Job Demands and Resources on Social Worker Burnout with Mindfulness
By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.
“Mindfulness is shown to help social work students and social workers reduce stress and enhance self-care, compassion and well-being.” – Pearce McCusker
Stress is epidemic in the western workplace with almost two thirds of workers reporting high levels of stress at work. In high stress occupations, like social work, burnout is all too prevalent. Burnout is the fatigue, cynicism, emotional exhaustion, sleep disruption, and professional inefficacy that comes with work-related stress. These stressors have been vastly amplified during the Covid-19 pandemic. Examining the causes of burnout, then should be a priority to find ways to improve the psychological health of social workers.
Contemplative practices have been shown to reduce the psychological and physiological responses to stress. Indeed, mindfulness has been shown to be helpful in treating and preventing burnout, increasing resilience, and improving sleep. Hence, it is reasonable to examine the association of mindfulness with the characteristics of the job and burnout to begin to determine how to improve the well-being of social work professionals.
In today’s Research News article “Job Demands, Resources, and Burnout in Social Workers in China: Mediation Effect of Mindfulness.” (See summary below or view the full text of the study at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8507647/ ) Huang and colleagues administered an anonymous online survey to social workers in China. They were measured during the Covid-19 pandemic for burnout including emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment subscales, job demands, job resources and mindfulness.
They found that the higher the levels of mindfulness and job resources the lower the levels of burnout and the higher the levels of job demands including workload and emotional demands the higher the levels of burnout. Structural equation modelling revealed that mindfulness partially mediated the associations of job resources and demands on burnout. Job resources were associated with lower burnout directly and also indirectly by being associated with higher mindfulness which was in turn associated with lower burnout. Similarly, job demands were associated with higher burnout directly and also indirectly by being associated with lower mindfulness which was in turn associated with greater burnout.
These results are correlative and as such causation cannot be determined. But mindfulness has been shown in past controlled research to produce lower levels of burnout. So, it is likely that the present relationships are the results of mindfulness causing higher resistance to burnout. It is not surprising that the workload and emotional demands of social work tend to produce burnout and that the resources available on the job tend to mitigate burnout. Social work is an extremely stressful occupation with high demands and low resources. So, it is promising that mindfulness may help to prevent the stress from these job characteristics from producing burnout. This suggests that mindfulness training might be incorporated into social work education to help arm the students to better deal with the job and withstand burnout.
So, reduce the impact of job demands and resources on social worker burnout with mindfulness.
“a career in social work is generally highly demanding, with large caseloads and minimal compensation. Imagine, for example, performing a job in which your caseload outweighs your time, your clients are victims of chronic abuse, and you barely earn enough money to pay your mortgage.” – Heather Lonczak
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies
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Study Summary
Huang, C., Xie, X., Cheung, S. P., Zhou, Y., & Ying, G. (2021). Job Demands, Resources, and Burnout in Social Workers in China: Mediation Effect of Mindfulness. International journal of environmental research and public health, 18(19), 10526. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph181910526
Abstract
Internationally, human service professionals, including social workers, experience high burnout and turnover rates. Despite the recent and rapid development of contemporary social work in China, Chinese social workers similarly experience significant rates of burnout. Therefore, there is a need to investigate the factors that contribute to social work burnout. This study applied the job demands and resources (JD-R) model to examine the effects of JD-R on burnout in social workers (n = 897) from Chengdu, China, and whether these relations are mediated by state mindfulness. Structural equation modeling results supported the previously hypothesized dual process by which JD-R affect burnout, specifically in a sample of social workers in China. Job demands (JD) were positively associated with burnout, while job resources (JR) were negatively associated with burnout. These relations were partially mediated by state mindfulness. JR had a strong, positive direct effect on mindfulness (β = 0.38), and its total effect on burnout was high (β = −0.56). Meanwhile, JD had a slight negative direct effect on mindfulness (β = −0.09), and its total effect on burnout was 0.42. The results suggest that the implementation of mindfulness-based interventions for social workers can potentially mitigate the effect of JD on burnout, as well as increase the effect of JR on burnout.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8507647/