Stress and burnout in psychiatric professionals when starting to use dialectical behavioural therapy in the work with young self‐harming women showing borderline personality symptoms

Abstract

The aim of the study was to investigate how starting to use dialectical behavioural therapy (DBT) in the work with young self-harming women showing symptoms of borderline personality disorder affected the psychiatric professionals (n = 22) experience of occupational stress and levels of professional burnout. The study was carried out in relation to an 18-month clinical psychiatric development project, and used a mix of quantitative and qualitative research methods [a burnout inventory, the Maslach burnout inventory-General Survey (MBI-GS), free format questionnaires and group interviews]. The result confirms previous reports that psychiatric health professionals experience treatment of self-harming patients as very stressful. DBT was seen as stressful in terms of learning demands, but decreased the experience of stress in the actual treatment of the patients. The teamwork and supervision were felt to be supportive, as was one particular facet of DBT, namely mindfulness training which some therapists felt also improved their handling of other work stressors not related to DBT. The inventory for professional burnout, the MBI-GS, showed no significant changes over the 18-month period, although there was a tendency for increased burnout levels at the 6-month assessment, which had returned to baseline levels at 18 months.