BURNOUT AND COPING AMONG SOCIAL WORKERS IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

This study examined burnout and coping among a sample of 100 social workers who are employed in five different social work settings. It was found that not only personal problems (such as excessive workload, age and perceived incompetence), but contextual problems (such as role ambiguity) and organisational problems (such as lack of autonomy) were significantly related to burnout. This suggests that burnout is not a personalised syndrome, and therefore, the responsibility for ameliorating burnout should not be placed solely on the individual. In response to these three categories of problems, three coping strategies were proposed. Using the revised version of Folkman and Lazarus's ways of coping, it was found that for personal problems, problem-focused coping (such as planning, and suppressing competing activities to focus on the problem) was most effective in reducing burnout. On the other hand, for contextual problems, emotion-focused coping (such as seeking of emotional support from colleagues, and positive reinterpretation of the problem) was most effective in reducing burnout. In assessing the utilisation of "less useful" coping ( such as mental and behavioural disengagement) to deal with organisational problems, no supportive results were found. When burnout was analysed across settings, it was shown to be highest in rehabilitation and institutionalisation social service agencies and least in indirect social work settings. It was found that settings which had utilised the effective coping strategies as proposed in this study were settings that experienced less burnout.