Abstract
Objective:To examine psychological distress and professional burnout in a cohort of Australian mental healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemicMethods:This study examined a multi-disciplinary cohort of mental healthcare workers in a large metropolitan service in Australia. Demographic information as well as information on employment and individual’s personal experience of the COVID-19 pandemic was collected and correlated with cross-sectional assessments of anxiety, depression and professional burnout using validated clinical questionnairesResults:Mental healthcare workers reported high levels of anxiety, depression, and professional burnout. Participants reported some reduction in anxiety since the early phases of the pandemic, but the reduction was more modest in mental healthcare workers identifying as being “vulnerable” employees.Conclusion:Despite the low numbers of COVID-19 cases, mental healthcare workers in Australia report significant levels of psychological distress and professional burnout during the pandemic.
Highlights
Healthcare professionals are at higher risk of developing anxiety, depression than the general population.[1,2] Risk factors include a challenging work environment, long working hours, high intensity work, home-work stress, and regular exposure to pain, suffering and death.[1]
DASS and Copenhagen Burnout Inventory (CBI) scores for respondents revealed elevated depression and anxiety sub-scores within the cohort, with 52.2% and 63.0% of respondents reporting moderate or more severe levels of depression or anxiety, respectively (Figure 3)
The findings from this study suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic has had negative impacts on mental healthcare workers across multiple life domains, in relation to their workplace culture and social activities
Summary
Metro South Human Research Ethics Committee granted ethical approval (HREC/2020/QMS/68529). Validated tools utilised included the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS-21), which uses 21 questions to assess symptom severity across three domains (anxiety, depression and stress)[9], and the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory (CBI), which assesses personal, work-related and client-related burnout[10]. These tools were chosen for their ability to discriminate across dimensions of experience, their common usage in similar studies, and being relatively quick to complete, minimising burden on participants.
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