Resources and Articles
Psychology Today - Equine Assisted Therapy: A Unique and Effective Intervention
www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/helping-kids-cope/201903/equine-assisted-therapy-unique-and-effective-intervention?fbclid=IwAR2isaNw9Lr0FYFG10Y3FXl5TqPEsK1zEc5mO3r6LQEYU3tADccuzu7FxvM
Nimer and Lundahl (2007) found consistent improvements in 4 main areas:
(https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2007-13585-002)
The influence of animals on the development of children
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1090023310004077
Abstract
There is a widespread belief that interaction with an animal is beneficial for the development of children, and several studies (most with methodological shortcomings) have investigated the influence of (companion) animals on the social–emotional and cognitive development of children. In this article, the 1984 model of Professor Jay Belsky has been used to describe which variables influence the development of children and how the companion animal–child interaction influences these variables. The value of the AAA/AAT (Animal Assisted Activities/Animal Assisted Therapy) programmes in children with a wide variety of clinical and social problems, such as behaviour problems and autistic spectrum symptoms, is discussed. The findings suggest that (companion) animals positively influence children’s development and have a valuable role in therapy.
www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/helping-kids-cope/201903/equine-assisted-therapy-unique-and-effective-intervention?fbclid=IwAR2isaNw9Lr0FYFG10Y3FXl5TqPEsK1zEc5mO3r6LQEYU3tADccuzu7FxvM
Nimer and Lundahl (2007) found consistent improvements in 4 main areas:
(https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2007-13585-002)
- Autism spectrum symptoms (e.g., positive social interactions and communication)
- Medical difficulties (e.g., heart rate, BP, motor skills, co-ordination)
- Behavioural problems (e.g., verbal resistance, aggression, violence & compliance with rules)
- Emotional well-being (e.g., anxiety, fear & depression)
The influence of animals on the development of children
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1090023310004077
Abstract
There is a widespread belief that interaction with an animal is beneficial for the development of children, and several studies (most with methodological shortcomings) have investigated the influence of (companion) animals on the social–emotional and cognitive development of children. In this article, the 1984 model of Professor Jay Belsky has been used to describe which variables influence the development of children and how the companion animal–child interaction influences these variables. The value of the AAA/AAT (Animal Assisted Activities/Animal Assisted Therapy) programmes in children with a wide variety of clinical and social problems, such as behaviour problems and autistic spectrum symptoms, is discussed. The findings suggest that (companion) animals positively influence children’s development and have a valuable role in therapy.
Australian Mental Health Social Workers’ Experiences of Burnout
For full article click here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0312407X.2023.2278768
ABSTRACT
Mental health practice is recognised as emotionally demanding and complex. Social workers and others working in this field of practice may be susceptible to stress and burnout. This study explored Australian social workers’ stories of burnout when working in the mental health sector. In the qualitative study described here, the method used was in-depth interviews to narratively understand and organise the experiences of 10 Australian mental health social workers who had a self-identified experience of burnout. Findings indicated that although there are individual and contextual aspects of burnout, mental health social workers would feel most supported by organisations implementing structured burnout prevention practices, including mandating supervision and regulating caseloads. These insights contribute to the profession’s understanding of burnout as experienced by Australian mental health social workers and may benefit practitioners and organisations to reduce the risk of burnout in future social work practice
IMPLICATIONS
Mental health practice is recognised as emotionally demanding and complex. Social workers and others working in this field of practice may be susceptible to stress and burnout. This study explored Australian social workers’ stories of burnout when working in the mental health sector. In the qualitative study described here, the method used was in-depth interviews to narratively understand and organise the experiences of 10 Australian mental health social workers who had a self-identified experience of burnout. Findings indicated that although there are individual and contextual aspects of burnout, mental health social workers would feel most supported by organisations implementing structured burnout prevention practices, including mandating supervision and regulating caseloads. These insights contribute to the profession’s understanding of burnout as experienced by Australian mental health social workers and may benefit practitioners and organisations to reduce the risk of burnout in future social work practice
IMPLICATIONS
- Mental health social work is emotionally demanding and social workers working in the sector may experience high levels of stress and burnout.
- Burnout is a stress-induced phenomenon that is multi-dimensional, yet many social workers are expected to manage this issue through individually structured practices such as self-care.
- Organisations need to take a stronger and more systemic approach to proactively prevent and respond to worker burnout in mental health work.
Conclusion - Participants in the present study identified many individual and organisational strategies that were believed to be helpful in reducing the risk of burnout in social workers. However, there are co-existing contextual factors contributing to the narrative of burnout that can be characterised by their non-agentic nature, which impacts on an individual in ways the individual has no control over. These can deeply affect an individual’s resilience and make them more vulnerable to burnout. The findings highlighted the need for organisations to be held accountable for staff experiencing burnout, as current policies reported were tokenistic and not informing daily practice. Organisations need to be more in tune with the human needs of their staff rather than just seeing them as workers at the organisation’s disposal.
Organisations need to be more responsive to burnout and need to be more attuned to workers’ need for high support in high-pressure, high-stress mental health roles. This could include burnout prevention policies and fostering a trauma-informed workplace culture. Further research investigating the perspectives of organisations and trialling the implementation of burnout prevention frameworks in organisations would be beneficial. This can potentially improve staff satisfaction, improve staff retention, and make the field more sustainable for mental health social workers long-term.
Studies on Burnout of Employees and what Organisations can do to support their staff:
Source: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0312407X.2023.2278768
Burnout is a stress-induced phenomenon that is multi-dimensional, yet many social workers and employees in the care and community sectors are expected to manage this issue through individually structured practices such as self-care.
Organisations need to take a stronger and more systemic approach to proactively prevent and respond to worker burnout in mental health work.
The mental health sector has been ranked after police work as the second most emotionally demanding field to work in (Coates & Howe, Citation2015). Many mental health social workers have chosen their career path due to their values of empathy and compassion, which they seek to demonstrate towards their clients (Hales et al., Citation2022). Richardson (Citation2023) and Reynolds (Citation2019, Citation2011) described how practitioners are frequently educated, inspired, and transformed by service users’ resistance to systemic injustice. They problematise the ideas of practitioners being harmed by service users, clarifying that it is the structural violence experienced by services users that can be harmful to both client and practitioner. Existing literature has identified a correlational relationship between practitioners working in the mental health field and experiences of positive psychological and emotional growth (Arnold et al., Citation2005; Cohen & Collens, Citation2013; Hyatt-Burkhart, Citation2014). This can be referred to as “vicarious posttraumatic growth”, which has been found to potentially foster resilience that acts as a protective factor against burnout (Kang & Yang, Citation2022, p. 152).
However, emotional and other service demands associated with the work can also position mental health social workers at risk of burnout. Burnout is a stress-induced phenomenon that can have detrimental effects on personal wellbeing and the quality of mental health care provided to service users (Volpe et al., Citation2014; Warikoo & Demirdogen, Citation2021). Burnout occurs when persistent fatigue, detachment, mental, or physical symptoms and emotional exhaustion can be attributed to prolonged exposure to workplace stress (Evans et al., Citation2006; Volpe et al., Citation2014). Figley (Citation2002) warned researchers of the job burnout overlap, clarifying that while both secondary trauma and burnout impact on a practitioner’s wellbeing, they are not the same. Watts (Citation2022) explained that the experience of burnout refers to a constellation of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual exhaustion and complications, which may be circumstantially tied to excessive work demands, or an existential loss of meaning, purpose, and value in the work itself (Watts, Citation2022).
The responsibility for managing burnout typically rests with individual workers. Richardson (Citation2023) warned against pathologising human resistance to systemic issues. Contemporary mental health organisations operate on an increasingly neoliberal philosophy (Baccaro & Howell, Citation2011), where competency and hard work can be rewarded with more work, positioning workers as individual actors operating in a performance culture (Davies, Citation2005). This means that workers are vulnerable to a lack of consistent regulation of caseloads and supervision provision in the field (Acker & Lawrence, Citation2009; Rollins et al., Citation2021; von Hippel et al., Citation2019). A study by Koh et al. (Citation2020) on burnout in palliative care contended that burnout prevention is best seen as a joint responsibility between leaders, team members, and organisations. Important factors identified included leaders being supportive and protective, teams growing together and sharing the workload, and organisations providing ongoing professional development opportunities to staff (Koh et al., Citation2020).
Various other literature has framed burnout as an inevitable phenomenon for workers in stressful careers with the responsibility of recovery falling on the individual (e.g., Acker & Lawrence, Citation2009; Demerouti, Citation2015; Leiss et al., Citation2021). This intersects with the broad presumption that the responsibility of preventing burnout through self-care practices lies with the individual practitioner. A review conducted by Fearon and Nicol (Citation2011) with nursing staff in the United Kingdom, found that the most effective approach to prevent burnout was a combination of positive emotion-focused and problem-focused strategies in addition to self-awareness, emotional intelligence, lifestyle, and clinical supervision.
An increasingly common method utilised by workplaces is the implementation of wellbeing activities focusing on mindfulness. This is “moment-to-moment, non-judgmental awareness, cultivated by paying attention in a specific way, that is, in the present moment, and as non-reactively, as non-judgmentally, and as openheartedly as possible” (Kabat-Zinn, Citation2015, p. 1481). This approach was explored in a study by von Hippel et al. (Citation2019), which found that mindfulness helped mental health social workers feel that they were more capable of handling work-related stress. Therefore, providing tools to individuals that help with emotion processing and regulation could possibly help prevent burnout (Cocker & Joss, Citation2016). This concept was supported by another study by Coates and Howe (Citation2015), which found that mental health workers struggled to handle clients’ negative emotions while simultaneously being expected to maintain professionalism and suppress their emotional responses to challenging experiences such as exposure to trauma. However, the overall lack of research into the ways organisations employing mental health social workers address burnout highlights the need for practitioners to inform policies and procedures that guide burnout prevention within organisations. This study was designed to probe an identified gap in the existing literature by drawing on mental health social workers’ narratives of burnout in the Australian context. The overall aim of the study was to explore the stories of burnout as experienced by Australian mental health social workers.
Participants in the present study identified many individual and organisational strategies that were believed to be helpful in reducing the risk of burnout in social workers. However, there are co-existing contextual factors contributing to the narrative of burnout that can be characterised by their non-agentic nature, which impacts on an individual in ways the individual has no control over. These can deeply affect an individual’s resilience and make them more vulnerable to burnout. The findings highlighted the need for organisations to be held accountable for staff experiencing burnout, as current policies reported were tokenistic and not informing daily practice. Organisations need to be more in tune with the human needs of their staff rather than just seeing them as workers at the organisation’s disposal.
Organisations need to be more responsive to burnout and need to be more attuned to workers’ need for high support in high-pressure, high-stress mental health roles. This could include burnout prevention policies and fostering a trauma-informed workplace culture. Further research investigating the perspectives of organisations and trialling the implementation of burnout prevention frameworks in organisations would be beneficial. This can potentially improve staff satisfaction, improve staff retention, and make the field more sustainable for mental health social workers long-term.
Burnout is a stress-induced phenomenon that is multi-dimensional, yet many social workers and employees in the care and community sectors are expected to manage this issue through individually structured practices such as self-care.
Organisations need to take a stronger and more systemic approach to proactively prevent and respond to worker burnout in mental health work.
The mental health sector has been ranked after police work as the second most emotionally demanding field to work in (Coates & Howe, Citation2015). Many mental health social workers have chosen their career path due to their values of empathy and compassion, which they seek to demonstrate towards their clients (Hales et al., Citation2022). Richardson (Citation2023) and Reynolds (Citation2019, Citation2011) described how practitioners are frequently educated, inspired, and transformed by service users’ resistance to systemic injustice. They problematise the ideas of practitioners being harmed by service users, clarifying that it is the structural violence experienced by services users that can be harmful to both client and practitioner. Existing literature has identified a correlational relationship between practitioners working in the mental health field and experiences of positive psychological and emotional growth (Arnold et al., Citation2005; Cohen & Collens, Citation2013; Hyatt-Burkhart, Citation2014). This can be referred to as “vicarious posttraumatic growth”, which has been found to potentially foster resilience that acts as a protective factor against burnout (Kang & Yang, Citation2022, p. 152).
However, emotional and other service demands associated with the work can also position mental health social workers at risk of burnout. Burnout is a stress-induced phenomenon that can have detrimental effects on personal wellbeing and the quality of mental health care provided to service users (Volpe et al., Citation2014; Warikoo & Demirdogen, Citation2021). Burnout occurs when persistent fatigue, detachment, mental, or physical symptoms and emotional exhaustion can be attributed to prolonged exposure to workplace stress (Evans et al., Citation2006; Volpe et al., Citation2014). Figley (Citation2002) warned researchers of the job burnout overlap, clarifying that while both secondary trauma and burnout impact on a practitioner’s wellbeing, they are not the same. Watts (Citation2022) explained that the experience of burnout refers to a constellation of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual exhaustion and complications, which may be circumstantially tied to excessive work demands, or an existential loss of meaning, purpose, and value in the work itself (Watts, Citation2022).
The responsibility for managing burnout typically rests with individual workers. Richardson (Citation2023) warned against pathologising human resistance to systemic issues. Contemporary mental health organisations operate on an increasingly neoliberal philosophy (Baccaro & Howell, Citation2011), where competency and hard work can be rewarded with more work, positioning workers as individual actors operating in a performance culture (Davies, Citation2005). This means that workers are vulnerable to a lack of consistent regulation of caseloads and supervision provision in the field (Acker & Lawrence, Citation2009; Rollins et al., Citation2021; von Hippel et al., Citation2019). A study by Koh et al. (Citation2020) on burnout in palliative care contended that burnout prevention is best seen as a joint responsibility between leaders, team members, and organisations. Important factors identified included leaders being supportive and protective, teams growing together and sharing the workload, and organisations providing ongoing professional development opportunities to staff (Koh et al., Citation2020).
Various other literature has framed burnout as an inevitable phenomenon for workers in stressful careers with the responsibility of recovery falling on the individual (e.g., Acker & Lawrence, Citation2009; Demerouti, Citation2015; Leiss et al., Citation2021). This intersects with the broad presumption that the responsibility of preventing burnout through self-care practices lies with the individual practitioner. A review conducted by Fearon and Nicol (Citation2011) with nursing staff in the United Kingdom, found that the most effective approach to prevent burnout was a combination of positive emotion-focused and problem-focused strategies in addition to self-awareness, emotional intelligence, lifestyle, and clinical supervision.
An increasingly common method utilised by workplaces is the implementation of wellbeing activities focusing on mindfulness. This is “moment-to-moment, non-judgmental awareness, cultivated by paying attention in a specific way, that is, in the present moment, and as non-reactively, as non-judgmentally, and as openheartedly as possible” (Kabat-Zinn, Citation2015, p. 1481). This approach was explored in a study by von Hippel et al. (Citation2019), which found that mindfulness helped mental health social workers feel that they were more capable of handling work-related stress. Therefore, providing tools to individuals that help with emotion processing and regulation could possibly help prevent burnout (Cocker & Joss, Citation2016). This concept was supported by another study by Coates and Howe (Citation2015), which found that mental health workers struggled to handle clients’ negative emotions while simultaneously being expected to maintain professionalism and suppress their emotional responses to challenging experiences such as exposure to trauma. However, the overall lack of research into the ways organisations employing mental health social workers address burnout highlights the need for practitioners to inform policies and procedures that guide burnout prevention within organisations. This study was designed to probe an identified gap in the existing literature by drawing on mental health social workers’ narratives of burnout in the Australian context. The overall aim of the study was to explore the stories of burnout as experienced by Australian mental health social workers.
Participants in the present study identified many individual and organisational strategies that were believed to be helpful in reducing the risk of burnout in social workers. However, there are co-existing contextual factors contributing to the narrative of burnout that can be characterised by their non-agentic nature, which impacts on an individual in ways the individual has no control over. These can deeply affect an individual’s resilience and make them more vulnerable to burnout. The findings highlighted the need for organisations to be held accountable for staff experiencing burnout, as current policies reported were tokenistic and not informing daily practice. Organisations need to be more in tune with the human needs of their staff rather than just seeing them as workers at the organisation’s disposal.
Organisations need to be more responsive to burnout and need to be more attuned to workers’ need for high support in high-pressure, high-stress mental health roles. This could include burnout prevention policies and fostering a trauma-informed workplace culture. Further research investigating the perspectives of organisations and trialling the implementation of burnout prevention frameworks in organisations would be beneficial. This can potentially improve staff satisfaction, improve staff retention, and make the field more sustainable for mental health social workers long-term.