Stress and burnout among social workers – a relation mediated by coping styles

As social workers experience higher levels of stress and burnout than comparable occupational groups, understanding what mediates their relationship could help develop adequate support services. Little is known about the mediating role of social workers’ coping strategies in the relationship between perceived stress and burnout, even more so in Romania, where the profession was reinstated after the fall of communism. We used measures of stress (Perceived Stress Questionnaire), coping (Brief-COPE), and burnout (Copenhagen Burnout Inventory-CBI). Following previous research, in a convenience sample of registered social workers (n = 324), we first test if stress and burnout are statistically significant correlated and second if problem-focused, emotion-focused, and avoidant coping mediate the relationship between stress and personal and work-related burnout experienced by Romanian social workers. Results show that avoidant coping (standardized indirect effect 0.044) partially mediates the relation between stress and personal burnout and emotion-focused coping (standardized indirect effect 0.022) partially mediates the relation between stress and work-related burnout, both having a reduced mediation impact. However, problem-focused coping does not mediate the relationship between stress and burnout. There is a low positive and significant partial mediation of (a) self-blame coping strategy (standardized indirect effect 0.046) in the relation between perceived stress and personal burnout and (b) denial coping strategy (standardized indirect effect 0.022) in the relation between perceived stress and work-related burnout. When comparing perceived stress and burnout levels, a more frequent use of maladaptive coping strategies leads to higher levels of stress and burnout, while a more frequent use of adaptive strategies has no effect. Our data show the need for training and developing adequate mechanisms to help social workers regulate stress levels. Future studies should investigate the role external factors (e.g., organizational or structural) play in reducing burnout levels and assuring that social workers’ needs for a healthy working climate are met.