Individual factors that cause professional burnout syndrome in social workers, employed in community rehabilitation centre for addictive diseases

Mykolas Romeris University, Vilnius, Lithuania

^* Corresponding author: vida.gudzinskiene@mruni.eu

Abstract

At the theoretical and empirical levels, the article reveals individual factors that cause professional burnout syndrome in social workers, employed in community rehabilitation centre for addictive diseases. Addiction is considered a disease that has aspects of biological, psychological, social, and spiritual nature. Professional burnout syndrome can be understood from different points of view that in total comprise a general concept and consist of the following aspects: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and decrease in self-realization. Research object is individual factors that cause professional burnout syndrome in social workers, employed in community rehabilitation centres for addictive diseases. The aim of the article is to reveal individual factors that cause professional burnout syndrome in social workers, employed in community rehabilitation centre for addictive diseases. Tasks: 1) to provide theoretical assumptions about individual factors that cause professional burnout syndrome; 2) based on experiences of social workers to reveal individual factors that cause professional burnout syndrome in social workers, employed in community rehabilitation centre for addictive diseases. Research methods are academic literature analysis, document analysis, and qualitative research. In the study, semi-structured interviews, quality (content) analysis, summarizing method were used.Empirical research revealed that individual factors that cause the development of professional burnout syndrome in social workers, employed in community rehabilitation centres for addictive diseases, are related to: employees’ feelings of inferiority and imposition of excessive requirements on themselves (timidity, self-devaluation; feeling of guilt; lack of self-evaluation skills and imposition of excessive requirements on oneself); personal qualities (too much empathy, attachment to clients or doubts about the meaning of work); individual factors related to the environment (having nobody to talk to about problems, inability to change the environment, prolonged stress, narrowing of interests outside work, and forced abandonment of activities that previously preventively helped to combat professional burnout syndrome). Individual factors related to clients (collapse of hopes to help the client and excessive responsibility of the social worker for the client’s life). Participants of the research became “inaccessible” to family members, were unable to distance themselves from work stress (worries outside work, obsessive thoughts that hinder dissociation from work, inability to relax, use of free time for work activities); felt a lack of general and professional competencies.