Abstract
Empathy is a complex cognitive and affective process that allows humans to experience concern for others, comprehend their emotions, and eventually help them. In addition to studies with healthy subjects and various neuropsychiatric populations, a few reports have examined this domain focusing on mental health workers, whose daily work requires the development of a saliently empathic character. Building on this research line, the present population-based study aimed to (a) assess different dimensions of empathy for pain in mental health workers relative to general-physicians and non-medical workers; and (b) evaluate their relationship with relevant factors, such as moral profile, age, gender, years of experience, and workplace type. Relative to both control groups, mental health workers exhibited higher empathic concern and discomfort for others’ suffering, and they favored harsher punishment to harmful actions. Furthermore, this was the only group in which empathy variability was explained by moral judgments, years of experience, and workplace type. Taken together, these results indicate that empathy is continuously at stake in mental health care scenarios, as it can be affected by contextual factors and social contingencies. More generally, they highlight the importance of studying this domain in populations characterized by extreme empathic demands.
Highlights
Empathy is a complex construct, which entails feeling concern for others, sharing and comprehending their emotions, prompting motivation to help them[1, 2]
A MANOVA analysis using the empathy domains as dependent variables (Purposely, EC, discomfort, intention to hurt and punishment) and group as between factor (MHW, general-physicians and non-medical professionals) revealed that the groups of subjects in each profession exhibited significant differences in empathy domains tracked with empathy-for-pain task (EPT) Wilk’s (Wilk’s Lambda = 12.71) (F (36, 372) = 25.51, p < 0.0001, η2 = 0.21)
Results in the non-medical workers did not reach significant values. In this population-based study, we examined the empathic profile of mental health workers (MHWs) and its relationship with potential modulating factors[19,20,21]
Summary
Empathy is a complex construct, which entails feeling concern for others, sharing and comprehending their emotions, prompting motivation to help them[1, 2]. The work of physicians requires understanding the patients’ thoughts and emotional experiences, as well as effectively communicating their comprehension[19, 20, 22,23,24] In this context, empathic skills emerges as a highly desirable trait[25], since they foster trust[26, 27], patient satisfaction[28], diagnosis efficacy[21], and, treatment adherence and success[29,30,31]. This domain may be sensitive to the physicians’ moral profile, as low levels empathic concern predict utilitarian moral judgment in this population[37,38,39]. Medical professionals at inpatient contexts experience enhanced stress levels and have more risk of burnout syndromes, which could eventually affect empathy skills[24, 48,49,50]
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