Unit:
Κατεύθυνση Ψυχική Υγεία Παιδιών και ΕφήβωνLibrary of the School of Health Sciences
Supervisors info:
Δημήτριος Αναγνωστόπουλος, Καθηγητής, Ιατρική Σχολή, ΕΚΠΑ, Επιβλέπων
Γεράσιμος Κολαΐτης, Καθηγητής, Ιατρική Σχολή, ΕΚΠΑ
Αικατερίνη Παπανικολάου, Αναπληρώτρια Καθηγήτρια, Ιατρική Σχολή, ΕΚΠΑ
Original Title:
Επαγγελματική εξουθένωση στους επαγγελματίες ψυχικής υγείας που εργάζονται με πρόσφυγες
Translated title:
The “burnout” syndrome in mental health professionals working with refugees
Summary:
Introduction: The problem of “burnout” has been particularly interesting in recent years. These professionals working with minor refugees are a high-risk group for burnout syndrome, and the consequences of this syndrome affect both themselves and the quality of care they provide to their patients. The reasons for this vary, and most of them have to do in general with idiosyncratic factors and the difficulty of working with mental patients, ecpecially with minor refugees.
Aim: This work is intended to investigate the work-related exhaustion experienced by mental health professionals, in particular those working with minor refugees and their families, comparing to other group of practitioners who offer their services to minor non-refugees.
Methods: The study sample consisted of 56 mental health professionals who work with minor refugees and their families on the one hand, and on the other 61 mental health professionals who are practicing on minor non-refugee population. For data collection was used the anonymous questionnaire Maslach Burnout Inventory (ΜΒΙ), and a form measuring socio-demografic data.
Results: While the two groups that were controlled demonstrated high percentages of burnout, the mental health professionals that work with refugee families with minors, demonstrated substantially higher burnout percentages than the mental health professionals that do not work with refugee population. More specifically, at "emotional exhaustion" the mean of those working with refugees was 38.3 while the control group had a mean of 25.2 (p-value<0.001). The mean "depersonalization" of mental health professionals working with refugees who are minors was 19.1 while the rest of the mental health professionals had a mean of 11.0 (p-value<0.001). Furthermore, the professonals that worked with refugees who were minors, had a mean "personal accomplishment" of 28.3 while the rest of the health professionals had a mean of 23.3 (p-value<0.001) which clearly indicates that they had a low sense of personal accomplishment but higher compared to the professionals of other services. No further statistically significant correlations were found regarding the socio-demographic characteristics.
Conclusions: According to the results of this current study, professionals working with minor refugees are exposed to a statistically higher risk of burnout comparing to those working with other groups of population, so the hypothesis has been confirmed. The need of additional research concerning programs of intervention and also confrontation plans is of high importance.
Main subject category:
Health Sciences
Keywords:
Burnout syndrome, Mental health professionals, Working conditions, Minors, Refugees
Number of references:
131
