How to Avoid Mental Health Professional Burnout – Interview with an Expert

The Mental Impact of the Pandemic

So far, conversations about mental health have taken a backseat in mainstream media to more immediate concerns related to the pandemic, such as hospital capacity and containment strategies. But in May, the World Health Organization (WHO) released a unique report entitled “COVID-19 and the Need for Action on Mental Health” addressing the potential impact of the crisis on mental health, which stated that psychological distress caused by the virus has become “widespread.”

One of the biggest demographics of concern is healthcare workers, who are under exceptional stress due to “being faced with extreme workloads, difficult decisions, risks of becoming infected and spreading the infection to families and communities, and witnessing deaths of patients,” the report said.

This comes as no surprise. Since the onset of the pandemic, heartbreaking personal videos and testimony from healthcare workers on social media have been circulating, broadcasting the trauma nurses and doctors have endured in dealing with the influx of COVID-19 patients.

Other vulnerable groups that the report says are also experiencing extra stress during this time are children and adolescents, who have been displaced from their school routines; women, who may be enduring a larger burden of childcare and household duties and increased domestic violence; and people in conflict settings, such as refugees.

As the economic burden of COVID-19 continues to rise, the WHO anticipates there will be “a long-term upsurge in the number and severity of mental health problems” in general. This is based on studies of the fallout from the 2008 economic crisis, which showed a rise in “deaths of despair” (i.e., suicides and substance-use related deaths) among working-age Americans.

The report gives a call to action for governments: to prioritize, preserve, and strengthen existing mental health services.

How to Fight Mental Health Professional Burnout

Knowing the challenges that therapists face in managing burnout in normal circumstances stacked on top of the added pressure to help clients navigate their fears during a time of crisis, how can mental health professionals avoid the dreaded feeling of burnout? Dr. Honda gave us a few tips.

Don’t Be Afraid to Seek Therapy Yourself

First and foremost, therapists need to get comfortable admitting when they need support, which may be easier said than done for some. There is a lingering false belief that mental health professionals should not need the same help that they provide—and that if they do, that they are less legitimate as professionals.

“Therapists tend to be self-sacrificial. There’s this culture and personality profile of saying, ‘I’m okay, I’m going to take care of other people. I don’t need help. I’m the helper,’ rather than acknowledging it and saying, ‘I’m not perfect and I need help, too,’” Dr. Honda said. “There’s a lot of shame in a lot of the helping professions in that to ask for help is somehow unprofessional—that you’re an amateur—but research demonstrates that couldn’t be farther from the truth.”

A study from the Journal of Humanistic Psychology that collected personal narratives from 9,000 therapists found that emotional struggle among mental health professionals is not only normal, but beneficial in helping others.

Like a student-teacher dynamic, it’s better to learn from someone who has first-hand experience in a subject rather than someone that has formal education but no real-world experience to back it up. In other words, therapists that acknowledge and work on their personal issues are better equipped to help clients work on their own therapy goals.

‘Download’ Your Feelings

In addition to seeking therapy, mental health professionals benefit from having a personal support system that they can lean on in their day-to-day lives.

“Being a therapist can be so stressful. There are times when every corner of your insecurities is pushed upon, and unless you have someone you can ‘download’ to every day, it’s going to build up,” Dr. Honda said.

Communicating your daily experiences to trusted friends and family, i.e. “downloading,” is key in avoiding burnout, yet Dr. Honda says that many of his supervisees and students don’t have these relationships.

“Having someone at the end of the day where you can come home and say, ‘I’ve just got to get something off my chest’ is important. A lot of therapists don’t have that. I’ll ask for a raise of hands in class and ask, ‘How many of you can go home tonight and immediately talk to someone and say whatever is on your mind?’ and half the class raises their hand. The other half doesn’t. You can’t wait for your therapist once a week. You have to download.”

Know When to Take a Step Back

As is true with any profession, therapists need work-life balance to maintain mental wellness. But prioritizing self-care has a similar stigma attached to it as the shame associated with therapists that seek therapy; it can wrongly be perceived as selfish or illegitimate.

“There does come a time when I will start advising my supervisees and students that they might need to pull back emotionally a little bit, compassion-wise, because they’re overextending themselves and it’s having those ill effects,” Dr. Honda.

In some cases, Dr. Honda says he has to make strong suggestions for students and supervisees to take vacations. But ideally, therapists should lighten their loads and schedule vacations before burnout takes its toll.

“It’s better to do 75 percent good enough job with all your clients than try to do 100 percent and then end up being 15 percent with all of your clients,” Dr. Honda said.

Acting in martyrdom—even when coming from a place of empathy—can end up causing more harm than good. As therapists brace themselves to help the population navigate this time of uncertainty, rather than feeling pressure to be the perfect therapist, they should keep in mind that in order to help others, they must first help themselves.

“One of the things I find with trainees is that I have to tell them to take care of themselves. You should do the best job you can, but don’t overextend yourself; if you do, then you’ll suffer and then all your clients will suffer,” Dr. Honda said.

You can tune in to listen to the “Psychology in Seattle” podcast online, where Dr. Honda and co-host Humberto Castañeda dive into managing anxiety during the pandemic, as well as other topics of interest to mental health professionals.