Saturday

Work Environment Stress

Stressors for mental health professionals in the work environment include:

Time Pressures


Negative Colleagues and/or Supervisors


Organizational Politics


Excessive Paperwork


Type of Clinical Setting
  • private practice
  • Group independent practice
  • community mental health agencies
  • residential treatment facilities
  • hospitals
Higher levels of stress have been reported in public agency settings rather than solo or group independent practice.

Higher levels of stress have also been reported due to:

Role Conflicts

  • In private practice, this could mean more time being spent on billing or advertising than conducting therapy.
  • In an agency setting, problems may occur with supervisors, agency policies, paperwork or being assigned tasks unrelated to clinical work.

Primary Causes of Job Stress

The term job stress refers to the stress derived from one's career, work or place of employment.

Job stressors are the demands made in the environment, both internal and external, that upset balance and affect a worker physically or psychologically.

A worker's characteristics and the work environment have been identified as the primary causes of job-related stress.

Worker's Characteristics (internal)
  1. Personality Traits
  2. Coping Style
  • Emotion-focused coping involves trying to reduce stress-related symptoms emotionally; better for short-term or unchangeable stressors.
  • Problem-focused coping involves trying to eliminate or change work-related stressors; beneficial for long-term social or environmental factors.

Work Environment (external)

Examples include:
  • Excessive workload demands
  • interpersonal relationships
  • work role conflicts
  • environmental conditions
  • different styles of management personnel
  • the design of work-related tasks

American Psychological Association Research Study (2007)

Individuals working in education and health service industries experienced higher levels of stress than those working in other professions, with four out of ten people experiencing extreme levels of stress.