The Impact of Personality and Workplace Belongingness on Mental Health Workers' Professional Quality of Life

Abstract

Objectives Mental health workers are constantly exposed to their clients' stories of distress and trauma. While listening to these stories can be emotionally draining, professionals in this field still derive pleasure from their work. This study examined the role of personality and workplace belongingness in predicting compassion satisfaction, secondary traumatic stress, and burnout in mental health workers. Methods Mental health staff (N = 156) working in a counselling service completed a questionnaire that included measures relating to professional quality of life, the Five‐Factor Model of personality, workplace belongingness, as well as questions relating to the participants' demographic profile, work roles, and trauma history. Results The results indicated that high levels of emotional stability (low neuroticism), extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and being connected at work, are essential factors that promote the professional quality of life of mental health workers. Specifically, workplace belongingness was the strongest predictor of compassion satisfaction and low levels of burnout, while neuroticism was the strongest predictor of secondary traumatic stress. Conclusions Important implications from this study include: (a) encouraging mental health staff to increase self‐awareness of their dispositional characteristics and how their personalities affect their well‐being at work; and (b) encouraging management to facilitate practices where mental health workers feel connected, respected, and supported in their organisation.

The five‐factor model of personality, work stress and professional quality of life in neonatal intensive care unit nurses

“…Although past research has shown that trait‐negative affect relates to secondary traumatic stress in hospital nurses (Craigie et al., ; Măirean, ; Somoray et al., ), the present study is the first to report the relationship between FFM personality traits and secondary traumatic stress in neonatal nurses. Neuroticism had a moderately strong correlation with secondary traumatic stress and neuroticism controlled for work stress made a unique contribution to the variance in secondary traumatic stress.…”

“…A meta‐analysis by Judge, Heller, and Mount () has shown that FFM neuroticism, agreeableness, extraversion and conscientiousness relate to work satisfaction, and these relationships are stronger and more consistent for neuroticism and extraversion. Although there has not been a study of FFM personality traits and compassion satisfaction in neonatal nurses, agreeableness, extraversion and conscientiousness have been shown to relate to work satisfaction in clinical nurse specialists (Chen, Chen, Tsai, & Lo, ) and compassion satisfaction in mental health professionals (Somoray, Shakespeare‐Finch, & Armstrong, ). Accordingly, one might reasonably expect FFM neuroticism, agreeableness, extraversion and conscientiousness to relate to compassion satisfaction in neonatal nurses.…”

A Systematic Review of Job Demands and Resources Associated with Compassion Fatigue in Mental Health Professionals

“…Germany, Austria and Switzerland [ 82 ]. Samples comprised professionals from diverse occupational groups such as counsellors [ 83 ], mental health social workers [ 76 , 78 , 79 , 80 ], mental health social work doctoral students [ 81 ], mental health nurses [ 84 , 85 , 86 , 87 , 88 ] employee assistance professionals [ 77 ], correctional officers [ 85 ], psychotherapists [ 89 ] and frontline mental health professionals [ 90 ]. The 15 included studies represented a combined sample size of 3356 participants ( M = 239.7, SD = 143), with individual study sample sizes ranging from 36 [ 85 ] to 532 [ 80 ].…”

“…Two studies [ 76 , 78 ] used the same dataset, and thus, their data were included only once. Of the nine studies that reported the mean age of participants [ 77 , 79 , 80 , 83 , 84 , 85 , 87 , 89 , 90 ], the combined average age was 47.1 years ( SD = 7.5 years) and ranged from 36.9 years to 59.9 years. In terms of sex distribution, the total number of female participants across all included studies was 1586 (47.3%).…”

Burnout y calidad de vida profesional en policías de Lima Metropolitana

“…laboral(Faleiros, 2008), ya que cuando los colaboradores se encuentran expuestos al estrés psicológico de las personas de su entorno laboral presentan una mayor carga emocional, que puede deteriorar su calidad de vida profesional y su capacidad para brindar un mejor servicio a la sociedad(Somoray, Shakespeare-Finch & Armstrong, 2017).En este sentido,Villarín, Méndez, Zuzúarregui, Sánchez y Conejo (2015) para conocer la calidad de vida profesional de los médicos de atención primaria del área sanitaria de Toledo, elaboraron un estudio en el cual encontraron que la percepción de apoyo directivo reflejó un valor mínimo y la carga de trabajo un valor intermedio, lo cual se asocia con un deterioro de la calidad de vida profesional total. No obstante, la motivación intrínseca fue alta.…”