Brief daily body-mind-spirit practice for sustainable emotional capacity and work engagement for community mental health workers - A multi-site randomized controlled trial

Abstract

BACKGROUND Prolonged overwhelming emotional involvement is a form of emotional labour which makes social service workers vulnerable to exhaustion, which is a central feature of burnout. In view of the emotional demanding nature of social services, we developed and successfully piloted a brief daily body-mind-spirit (BMS) program. The current study focuses on the well-being of community mental health workers. Their scope of service is extremely wide, ranging from education and prevention to treatment and rehabilitation. Service users include people with severe mental illness and common mental disorder. Charged with such a wide scope of responsibility, community mental health workers are under chronic stress and vulnerable to burnout. They are in need of continued support for sustainable emotional capacity and work engagement. OBJECTIVE and DESIGN The proposed study aims to evaluate the efficacy of a brief daily BMS program for fostering sustainable emotional capacity and work engagement for community mental health workers. A multi-site randomized controlled trial design is adopted. Twelve community mental health centers joined the study, resulting in a total sample size of 192. To investigate the course of changes in burnout and engagement, each group will last 6 months, including 3-month intervention and 3-month post-intervention follow-up. Measures will be taken at baseline and then at monthly intervals. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Findings revealed reduction of exceptional high engagement alongside with reduction of burnout. Engagement may be like ‘fire’ fueling us at work, but it can ‘burn’ if it is overly strong. There may be an optimal range for work engagement. Most staff well-being programs are one-off in design, and can hardly produce sustaining effects. The current study demonstrated that a long duration well-being program can be feasible and effective. At theoretical level, the study revealed new understanding of work engagement.