Relationships among resilience, social interest and burnout for employees of a residential treatment facility

According to published research (Brice, Collins, Matthews, McNamara, & Smith, 2000), the industries that reported the highest rates of total cases of work-related stress were human health and social work, education and public administration, and defense. Job stress was estimated to cost U.S. industry ;The current study explored the relationships among resilience, social interest, and burnout for a sample of employees of a residential treatment facility in the Midwest. The Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (Connor & Davidson, 2003), Social Interest Scale (Crandall, 1975/1991), the Maslach Burnout Inventory (Jackson, Leiter, & Maslach, 1986), and a demographic questionnaire developed for this study were used. As expected, participants with higher levels of resilience reported lower levels of burnout. More specifically, resilience significantly predicted levels of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment. It was also expected that higher levels of social interest would be positively correlated with levels of resilience; however, findings did not support this hypothesis. And finally, it was hypothesized that social interest would be a moderating factor between resilience and levels of burnout. Higher levels of social interest significantly predicted a stronger relationship between resilience and personal accomplishment. However, for emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, higher and lower levels of social interest significantly weakened the relationship with resilience.;This study's findings also indicate that participants between ages 26 and36 reported higher levels of depersonalization those age 48 to58. Males reported higher levels of resilience and lower levels of emotional exhaustion than females. Divorced participants lower levels of depersonalization than never married participants and those and living with a significant other. Married participants also reported lower levels of depersonalization than never married individuals. Participants with a High School diploma or GED had lower levels of personal accomplishment than participants with some college, a 4 year degree, and a graduate degree. Participants who had been employed in the human services field for over 20 years reported higher levels of depersonalization than those who had been employed from 3 to 5 years. For participants who worked over 8 hours at another job, their levels of emotional exhaustion were almost tripled compared to participants who only worked 3.5 to 8 hours at another job. More research with larger more representative samples is needed in this area. The role of variables such as number of children in the home and experience of life stressors needs to be explored. Finally, future studies may want to use a more accurate measure of exposure to challenging client behaviors and explore sources of stress for human service employees not involved in direct client care.