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Johanna's avatar

Psychologist, teachers, nurses, social workers etc, are all burnt out above the national average of other professions / sectors. They all have a few things in common. One they are front line workers who bore the brunt of Covid’s negative mental and physical impact on society. Two they care deeply about their jobs and are inherently intrinsically motivated. Caring uses a lot of psychological resources. They are all also working in under resourced sectors (for different reasons, I.e psychologist are dealing with an unprecedented surge in demand for mental health services where as teachers are dealing with issues of retention and shortages from ppl retiring and an inability to recruit and retain the next gen of teachers). They are all involved managing people’s welfare, where a negative outcomes in this line of work are serious and therefore these sectors involve lots of policy and bureaucracy to manage risk which is useful but means they work in rigid, inflexible workplaces and often without a lot of room for autonomy which is essential for fostering autonomous motivation which is linked to wellbeing and protecting against burnout. If you find a solution to psychologist burnout there will be lots of share with these other sectors too!

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