Psychosocial hazards in mental healthcare contribute to the development of compassion fatigue in mental health professionals. Compassion fatigue has a negative impact on the mental health and wellbeing of professionals that can impair the quality of services provided to clients. The majority of research on compassion fatigue has focused on individual-level variables such as gender, history of trauma and age, among others. It is also imperative to understand the role played by alterable work-related characteristics in contributing to the development of compassion fatigue in order to attenuate its impact on mental health professionals and their clients. The present review examined articles exploring work-related factors associated with compassion fatigue. Fifteen quantitative studies were included and their quality was assessed using a checklist. An inductive content-analysis approach was adopted to synthesise the themes emerging from the data. The results suggested a theoretical model consistent with the Job Demands-Resources model, wherein job demands (such as workplace trauma, workload and therapeutic settings) are associated with compassion fatigue, and job resources (such as supervisors’, coworkers’ and organisational support) mitigate the impact of job demands. In addition to person-oriented factors, work-related factors are critical for the prevention of compassion fatigue.

The present study investigates relations among emotional labour, emotional regulation strategies, and secondary traumatic stress (STS) in a sample of allied mental health professionals (AMHPs) in the UK. It empirically examines the relationship between emotional labour and STS; and, explores the moderational role of emotional regulation strategies. Participants included 99 clinical psychologists, psychotherapists, counsellors, and psychiatric social workers who completed an anonymous online questionnaire consisting of items related to demographics, emotional labour (surface acting and deep acting), emotional regulation strategies (cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression), and STS. Fifty-one percent of participants reported high levels of STS. Data analysed using hierarchical multiple regression revealed that age, surface acting, and expressive suppression significantly predicted STS. Deep acting predicted STS only for those participants who reported high levels of STS. Cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression did not moderate the relationship between emotional labour and STS. Limitations of the study mainly relate to its small sample size. It contributes to the literature by highlighting high levels of STS among AMHPs and providing a rationale for future research on the construct. In addition, it promotes the development of AMHPs’ personal capabilities and professional resources to ensure effective delivery of mental health services.

The challenges that individuals and teams face in complex and unstable environments can negatively affect individuals’ psychological health and team performance. In such contexts, resilience becomes an essential resource for both teams and individuals. It is therefore important to develop a comprehensive approach of resilience at work. The aim of this study is to examine the concurrent and differential effects of individual and team resilience, at both the within-group and between-group levels, on team performance and psychological health (i.e., operationalised as stress and subjective well-being). A cross-sectional survey of 530 employees nested within 68 teams was conducted. Multilevel Structural Equation Modelling analyses indicated that both individual resilience and team resilience at the within-group level were related to psychological health and team performance. Individual resilience was more strongly related to psychological health than to team performance, while the opposite was the case for team resilience. At the between-group level, individual resilience was related to psychological health, while team resilience was related to team performance. These findings suggest that resilience comprises of several components that are equally important but in different ways. Having resilient individuals in a team matters more for psychological health and ensuring that teams sustain a resilient group dynamic is more important for team performance.

The Professional Quality of Life Scale Version 5 (ProQOL 5; Stamm, 2010) is often used to assess burnout, secondary traumatic stress, and compassion satisfaction in allied mental health professionals in the UK. However, vital empirical evidence assessing psychometric properties of this instrument for this occupational group or in this national context does not exist. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to conduct a confirmatory factor analysis to validate ProQOL 5 in a sample of 366 UK-based clinical psychologists, counsellors, and psychotherapists recruited via online purposive sampling. The findings indicated that in alignment with existing research, the original three-factor structure demonstrated poor fit to data. Thus, the structure was investigated further with a novel technique in network psychometrics called bootstrapped exploratory graph analysis (bootEGA). The results indicated that 21 items from the original 30-item ProQOL 5 demonstrated satisfactory levels of item stability, i.e., all items were replicated in more than 80% of bootstrapped samples. The present study is the first to evaluate the internal structure of ProQOL 5 in a sample of mental health professionals based in the UK.

The imposition of nation-wide lockdowns and sporadic transition to remote work produced unforeseen psychological challenges likely to impact the medium of care and workload of mental health professionals. The present study explored the lived occupational experiences of clinical psychologists, counsellors, and psychotherapists working in the National Health Service (NHS) and private practice in the UK during COVID-19 pandemic. Nineteen professionals (11 employed in the NHS and 8 working in independent settings) were interviewed about their professional experiences during first and second waves of the pandemic. Data were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Three main themes emerged from the analysis: (i) transition from face to face to online therapy; (ii) novel changes and wellbeing; and (iii) uncertain professional support in uncertain times. The findings suggest that lack of experience in providing online or telephonic psychotherapeutic services from home negatively impacted professionals’ physical and psychological health and wellbeing. Thus, to cope with it, they availed psychological and structural support from colleagues, co-workers, clinical supervisors, managers, organisations, and professional bodies. This study adds to the existing body of research on the impact of the pandemic on UK-based mental health professionals and from an applied perspective, it highlights the need for skill-upgradation of professionals.