Within the behavioral healthcare field, organizations and providers remain focused on improving the mental health and wellbeing of patients and clientele. This is a very important mission that deserves a great deal of focus, but the wellbeing of mental health providers also needs to be a continuous focus. We all do our best work when we feel our best, so taking care of employees within the field and addressing the prevalence of burnout in mental health professionals is an essential part of maintaining a high quality of care for patients.
Learn more about the stressors that contribute to burnout and the signs to look out for below. You can also explore key strategies to support your employees in combating burnout.
What Is Burnout, and Why Does It Matter?
The American Psychological Association (APA) defines burnout as "a physical, mental, or emotional exhaustion that is accompanied by decreased motivation, lowered performance, and negative attitudes toward oneself and others." Other symptoms of burnout may include depersonalization and irritability. The APA notes that burnout typically results from performing at a high level or in a high-stress role for a prolonged period of time.
While employee burnout is an issue that can impact workers in all career paths, healthcare workers and those in helping fields tend to be particularly prone to burnout. Workers providing direct mental health services to patients may also experience compassion fatigue and secondary trauma from continuously being exposed to emotionally demanding conversations. These can both be common contributors to therapist burnout and burnout in mental health professionals overall.
Burnout can have negative impacts for the individual employee, their patients, and the organization overall. It's associated with decreased work performance and negative attitudes or outlooks, which can impact how healthcare professionals serve and interact with patients. Burnout can also decrease job satisfaction and increase employee turnover.
The Epidemic of Burnout in Mental Health Professionals
The mental health field has historically had high levels of burnout, but rates have been increasing over the last five years. The COVID-19 pandemic hugely impacted the mental wellbeing of patients and providers, as demand for mental health services rose beyond the level that mental health systems could meet. As clinicians work to address this increased demand, many are experiencing higher-than-usual levels of work-related stress. The CDC found that 46% of respondents working in the mental health field reported often feeling burned out in 2022, a sharp increase from the 32% that reported such feelings in 2018.
Paired with this increased demand are ongoing mental health staffing shortages, which also place added stress on behavioral health professionals. High workloads and long work hours are major determinants of whether an employee develops burnout. When organizations are understaffed, existing employees are often expected to take on more cases or fill in with extra shifts. Thus, the mental health workforce shortage is also worsening the epidemic of burnout within the field.
4 Signs of Burnout in Mental Health Professionals
Recognizing the signs of burnout early on can help you better support your employees and help them fight off feelings of exhaustion and overwhelm. Here are the top signs to look out for.
1. Increased Absenteeism
Absenteeism often correlates with burnout and employee disengagement. Employees who are feeling burned out may start to call out or arrive late more frequently. Direct supervisors will often notice this sign first, as increased absenteeism can be disruptive within the behavioral health workforce and require adjusting patient appointments or finding staffing coverage.
If you’re using an HR software program with time and attendance tracking, you can also review attendance data regularly to try to identify employees who may be experiencing burnout or disengagement.
2. A Shift in Attitude
If an employee who is usually positive and optimistic becomes more critical of themselves or starts expressing a more negative outlook at work, they may be experiencing burnout. Check in with employees who seem more cynical, self-critical, or irritable than usual.
3. Isolation from Coworkers
Employees experiencing burnout may begin to isolate themselves and become withdrawn from team members. This is one of the most important signs to look out for, as this isolation will often ultimately worsen burnout by removing the employee’s social support system.
4. Decreased Productivity or Performance
Lowered work performance and productivity can both be signs of burnout. Measuring productivity can be a bit challenging in mental health roles. For example, there are often a set number of therapy or psychiatry appointments on the provider’s schedule, so you may not notice an obvious fluctuation in work output. However, you may notice things like an employee falling behind in entering notes or billing.
How to Prevent and Combat Burnout
While the mental health field does have high rates of burnout, there are plenty of steps you can take to help support your team in preventing or working through burnout. From peer support to process optimization, these are the top strategies to implement to address behavioral healthcare employee burnout.
Monitor Assigned Caseloads
Heavy or unrealistic workloads are a recipe for burnout. Keeping a close eye on employee caseloads and doing regular systematic reviews of assignments can help ensure that you are setting reasonable expectations and not placing undue stress on any particular employee.
An electronic health record software, like ContinuumCloud’s EHR, can help you keep tabs on each provider's assigned caseload. The clinical care management functions within our EHR make it easy for administrators and managers to view a provider’s caseload and reassign cases as needed to provide a more manageable and even workload distribution.
Recognize Your Employees’ Efforts
Those experiencing burnout often feel a decreased sense of personal accomplishment from their work, but receiving recognition from peers and supervisors may help them feel a greater sense of pride in their hard work. Offering a digital peer recognition system is a great way to make this process quick and easy for everyone to participate in regularly.
ContinuumCloud’s HCM platform offers an employee recognition feature called Shout Outs that can facilitate peer recognition. This feature is built into the platform and easily accessible to all employees. Shout Outs allow team members to write and share quick messages to publicly recognize their coworkers when they do a great job or accomplish a goal.
Encourage Healthy Coping Skills
Mental health professionals like therapists and social workers often spend a lot of time guiding clients through practicing healthy coping skills and stress management techniques, but sometimes your team needs a reminder to apply those practices to their own lives as well. Since mental healthcare clinicians and support staff are often dealing with high caseloads and short staffing, it can be challenging for them to find time to take breaks and prioritize self-care. Encourage them to take breaks to get some fresh air or to practice mindfulness so they can ward off work stress.
Use Digital Communication Tools To Stay Connected
Keeping employees engaged and connected within the overall community of the company is a great strategy for preventing burnout. However, it's a bit tougher in the digital age of telehealth and remote work. You’ll need to make use of digital communication tools to keep everyone connected and engaged.
ContinuumCloud’s HR management tools include company-wide communication and collaboration capabilities to help your team stay connected even when they’re working from home or across different worksites. You can use the Company News feature to share announcements on organizational updates and wellness initiatives or to celebrate wins such as great patient feedback.
Eliminate Unnecessary Manual Processes
Inefficient manual processes can take up a lot of time for healthcare providers and administrators. Automating processes like documentation, appointment scheduling, and medical billing frees up more time for providers and reduces stress. These administrative tasks can be a major burden for mental health professionals who already have a lot of work on their plates. Automating these processes will help them check some items off of their to-do lists and prevent burnout.
It can also free up time for administrators and human resources team members, who can then reallocate that time to better supporting employees. ContinuumCloud’s HCM can streamline tasks like onboarding and payroll processing to give leaders more time to work on building their employee engagement strategy or setting up programs and interventions to minimize burnout in the workplace.
Provide Access to Well-Rounded Benefits
Offering employee benefits is key to maintaining employee wellbeing. Benefits can include health insurance and employee assistance programs (EAPs) that allow employees to access services and support to promote their wellbeing. Employees experiencing burnout may benefit from accessing mental health services for themselves or using an EAP to find resources to improve their wellness.
In addition to offering these benefits, it’s also important that employees know how to sign up for and access them. Using an HCM software for benefits administration can simplify the enrollment process for employees and ensure that they always have easy access to their benefits information through an employee portal.
Leveraging an HCM to Address Burnout in Mental Health Professionals
Burnout in mental health professionals is a unique challenge impacting the behavioral health industry, so your business needs a unique solution to properly address it. ContinuumCloud’s HCM platform was purpose-built for behavioral health and human services organizations, so its tools are expertly designed to engage and support mental health workers.
ContinuumCloud’s HCM software is a unified solution that provides well-rounded tools to support peer recognition, workflow automation, internal communication, and benefits enrollment. All of these features can work together to address burnout in mental health professionals. Contact us to learn more about how our solutions can help your organization support employee engagement and create a burnout prevention strategy.
