Mental health, "burnout" and job satisfaction in a longitudinal study of mental health staff.

BACKGROUND

This study examines whether the adoption of a more community based model in an inner city psychiatry service is accompanied by increasing "burnout", deteriorating mental health and decreasing job satisfaction amongst staff.

METHOD: Questionnaires were sent annually for 3 consecutive years to all mental health staff working in three adult mental health sectors in inner London. Main outcome measures were the 12-item General Health Questionnaire, Maslach Burn-out Inventory and a general job satisfaction measure.

RESULTS

There was no significant change over time in the outcome measures, once confounding by job and demographic variables was examined. Being based in the community was associated with higher GHQ-12 scores (P = 0.02) when compared to in-patient staff over the 3 years.

CONCLUSIONS

These results suggested that working in the community may be more stressful than working in in-patient services. However, there was no evidence to suggest that levels of stress are increasing over time, either in community-based or hospital-based staff.