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Key points
- Mental health providers frequently do not have control over key variables that contribute to burnout.
- The best defense against provider burnout is a good leader; but individuals must also advocate for themselves.
- Combining a passion with one's primary professional skillset to achieve greater job satisfaction may help to prevent burnout.
Mental health providers in general battle issues related to vicarious trauma, living the crises of patients and clients on a regular basis, and in this pandemic era, significant overwork while managing their own stressors. It’s easy to get burned out.
Issues related to burnout among mental health providers are typically self-managed. We are expected to put certain safeguards in place to take care of ourselves. These include all of the things we teach anyone who will listen: Eat healthily, exercise, moderate alcohol, socialize, get good sleep, manage time wisely, etc. These are clearly important habits to help maintain both physical and psychological health, but when it comes to burnout, they may be insufficient.
There is no magic bullet when it comes to burnout. And while the person primarily responsible for preventing burnout is the individual provider themself (i.e., self-care), there are fundamental tenets of burnout prevention that are typically not in the control of the mental health provider. The best core defense against burnout is a good leader who facilitates realistic patient schedules, minimizes administrative requirements, and allows flexibility in scheduling such that longer appointments are possible for those patients who have conditions that require extended sessions (e.g., trauma patients). However, while these are necessary components, and because such systemic protections are often beyond our control, preventing burnout takes creative problem-solving on the part of the individual provider. We must be our own best advocates and problem-solvers because there is no one—nor should there be anyone—who prioritizes our own mental health more than ourselves.
And while heavy caseloads, vicarious trauma, administrative burdens, and overwork are definitely key variables in burnout, these are not the only contributors, and are often not the most significant ones. Case in point: For me currently, the burnout doesn’t come from the workload or traumas of the aviation personnel I evaluate. The burnout is directly linked to having to determine that someone can no longer have their flight status, and to be the impetus of their permanent grounding. That is topped off by having to be the party to tell them that their flying career is over. These are my worst days in the Navy. Intellectually, I know I did not cause whatever symptoms/disease they are experiencing and that to ground someone with mental health symptoms that create a danger to the safety of the servicemember and others is the right thing to do; to my own psyche, this rational thinking doesn’t offer much solace.
Combining skillsets
While there is no way to make that experience less stressful, I found a countermeasure that helps me sleep at night and keeps me grounded. In short, I came up with a way to apply my particular set of skills to help aspiring flight personnel obtain their flight status. As a fellow aeromedical officer described it, every time you can get/keep someone flying, you make someone’s dreams come true.
Because burnout can be an individual phenomenon, I had to find something to work for me. I found it at the survival pool. In my pre-Navy life, I coached a swim team, taught people to swim, and swam competitively. In my Navy life, I am an expert in military stress reactions. Put the two of these together, and my skills are a force to help people conquer their fears and get through the Navy’s arduous water survival training. Working with one of the Navy divers at the training pool, we have a formidable success rate of getting individuals who experienced disabling anxiety during the training through the tower jumps and underwater swimming, the dreaded helicopter dunker, and the evolutions requiring swimming and other water-based skills while wearing full flight gear.
This doesn’t take the sting out of telling someone they can’t fly, but it evens things out enough that I continue to love what I do, I take care of myself, and I can maintain a healthy perspective.
Self-advocacy
Provider burnout is an individual experience, and currently is a significant concern given the increased workload secondary to the pandemic. Mental health providers must be an active force in preventing their own burnout. One way to do this is to combine individual passions with psychological assessment and/or treatment abilities in order to keep things fresh and maintain a healthy perspective. Healthier mental health professionals are better able to make everyone else healthier, too.
