EMOTIONAL BURNOUT AMONG CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGISTS: CAUSES AND PREVENTION

Gaichenia Tatiana Andreevna

Nowadays, due to the rapidly growing role of social assistance and a wide variety of helping professions (including clinical psychologists), the importance of the level of competence of the above mentioned specialists, as well as their mental health, is increasing desperately. That is a necessary requirement not only for the efficiency of their work, but also for the safety reasons for their patients. However, in the conditions of modern work realities, specialists in this field are most often prone to burnout syndrome due to the fact that their work requires constant emotional involvement and empathy to victims of difficult situations and life circumstances, including such difficult topics for each person as loss, violence, grief, death, alcoholism, drug addiction and other kinds of addictions, and so on. This article describes the possible causes of clinical psychologists’ burnout, as well as measures that can be aimed at preventing this phenomenon. The scientific and practical significance of this article is that the process of emotional burnout is typical for many specialists of helping professions, and this explains the purpose of this study — the article can help them prevent the process of emotional burnout and professional deformation, as well as find out tools that could become the prevention of this process in future.

Keywords:emotional burnout, clinical psychologist, prevention of emotional burnout, professional deformation