Abstract
Personal distress is an aspect of the empathy construct which has been negatively associated with a range of psychological and behavioral problems. However, it is unclear whether mindfulness serves to buffer these negative relationships. This study examines direct effects and mediation effects of personal distress and mindfulness among three measures of professional quality of life: compassion fatigue, burnout, and compassion satisfaction. This model was tested using a sample of clinical social workers (n = 171). Results indicated that higher personal distress is significantly associated with higher compassion fatigue and burnout and lower compassion satisfaction, while mindfulness is significantly associated with lower compassion fatigue and burnout and higher compassion satisfaction. Mediation analyses showed significant indirect effects on all three measures of professional quality of life, with effect sizes in the small to moderate range. The indirect effects of mindfulness via the personal distress path accounted for 14-22% of the total effect of mindfulness on the three measures of professional quality of life. Implications for the education and training of social workers are discussed.
Highlights
Personal distress is an aspect of the empathy construct which has been negatively associated with a range of psychological and behavioral problems
This study examined the relationship between personal distress, mindfulness, and professional quality of life, including compassion fatigue, burnout, and compassion satisfaction, and explored whether personal distress may function as a mediator for the relationship between mindfulness and professional quality of life
The personal distress subscale of the empathy construct was significantly correlated with all three dependent variables (Pearson’s r ranging from .36.39)
Summary
Personal distress is an aspect of the empathy construct which has been negatively associated with a range of psychological and behavioral problems. This study examines direct effects and mediation effects of personal distress and mindfulness among three measures of professional quality of life: compassion fatigue, burnout, and compassion satisfaction. This model was tested using a sample of clinical social workers (n = 171). Despite significant semantic differences, broad conceptual agreement exists regarding important ideas about empathy These basic ideas which emerged from social and developmental psychology have been elegantly explicated, reinforced, and enriched by a wealth of sophisticated research emerging from social neuroscience and the neuroimaging techniques currently available. The empathy process is not linear, but occurs in dynamic, iterative, reciprocal feedback loops; the outcome of these processes is variable (Decety, 2011; Singer & Lamm, 2009)
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