Relationship between mentalizing and teacher burnout: A cross sectional study.

BACKGROUND: Teaching is considered a high-risk profession due to the high impact of occupational risk factors which can endanger educators' mental health and lead to burnout syndrome. This study aimed to examine whether the capacity for mentalizing in teachers explains the degree of their burnout syndrome. The expectation was that a low capacity for mentalizing increases the degree of burnout. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted on a sample of 823 teachers. The Maslach Burnout Inventory-Educators Survey was used to examine the burnout syndrome. The capacity for mentalizing was examined using hypomentalizing and hypermentalizing scales from the Reflective Functioning Questionnaire. RESULTS: The expectation that a low capacity for mentalizing increases teachers' burnout confirms the finding that hypomentalizing is a positive predictor of their emotional exhaustion as a dimension of burnout (ß = 0.09; p < 0.01). Unexpectedly, hypomentalizing proved to be a positive predictor of personal accomplishment (ß = 0.09; p < 0.05), which indicates that with a lower capacity for mentalizing, teachers experience greater personal accomplishment. Also, hypermantalizing was a negative predictor of emotional exhaustion (ß = -0.17; p < 0.01) and depersonalization (ß = -0.31; p < 0.01), and a positive predictor of personal accomplishment (ß = 0.30; p < 0.01). The findings showed that with higher socioeconomic status, with marriage and having children, the burnout of teachers is lower, as expected. CONCLUSIONS: Capacity for mentalizing and burnout syndrome in teachers are interrelated phenomena. With a good capacity for mentalizing, emotional exhaustion and burnout in teachers are reduced. Knowledge and skills that enable a good capacity for mentalizing should be included in educational and teacher training programs.

Resilience, Mentalizing and Burnout Syndrome among Healthcare Workers during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Serbia.

The aim of this study was to examine whether the capacity for mentalizing and resilience among healthcare workers (HCWs) explains the degree of burnout syndrome during the COVID-19 pandemic in Serbia. The research was conducted on a sample of 406 healthcare workers (141 doctors and 265 nurses), aged 19 to 65 years (M = 40.11, SD = 9.41)­203 worked on the COVID-19 frontline, and 203 in regular clinical conditions. The Maslach Burnout Inventory was used to measure the burnout syndrome. Capacity for mentalizing was examined using the Reflective Functioning Questionnaire. The Brief Resilience Scale was used to measure resilience. The results indicated that there were negative correlations between resilience and the dimensions of burnout­emotional exhaustion (r = −0.38; p < 0.01) and depersonalization (r = −0.11; p < 0.05), and a positive correlation between resilience and personal accomplishment (r = 0.27; p < 0.01), as was expected. The analyses of hierarchical linear regression showed that hypomentalizing was a significant positive predictor of emotional exhaustion (ß = 0.12; p < 005) and depersonalization (ß = 0.15; p < 0.05), resilience was a significant negative predictor of emotional exhaustion (ß = −0.28, p < 0.01) and positive predictor of personal accomplishment (ß = 0.20; p < 0.01), and that the degree of explained variance of burnout dimensions was higher when resilience and hypomentalizing were included in regression models, in addition to sociodemographic variables. The findings suggest that being a woman and working on the COVID-19 frontline implies a higher burnout, while the level of burnout decreases with better socioeconomic status and more children. Resilience, capacity for mentalizing, and burnout syndrome among HCWs are interrelated phenomena, which have important professional implications.