Stress Coping Strategies Among Addiction Treatment Providers: Implications for Organizational Health Promotion Interventions

Addiction treatment providers (ATPs) have high rates of turnover, partially driven by occupational stressors (e.g. low wages, client overdoses). Such stressors have been documented, but less is known about ATPs’ adaptive and maladaptive coping strategies and how organizations can enhance adaptive coping. ATPs (N = 49) working at 15 nonprofit residential facilities were purposively recruited to participate in semi-structured interviews and focus groups to understand ATP working conditions, stressors, and coping mechanisms. Transcripts were double-coded (inter-coder reliability kappa = 0.82), and qualitative themes were identified through transcript analysis. Participants described how ATPs’ personal addiction recovery histories interacted with occupational stressors, impacting emotional wellbeing. Participants reported how paid time-off (PTO) was a necessary coping resource for ATPs to recuperate and remain in their jobs, but described notable PTO barriers, often relying on other maladaptive coping mechanisms, like smoking, to help manage occupational stressors. Two particularly promising organizational practices to reduce maladaptive coping and boost adaptive coping were identified: (1) incentivizing smoking cessation through additional PTO; and (2) paid worktime for telehealth appointments. Especially when combined with other organizational interventions, expanding PTO and protected worktime for telehealth may help enhance adaptive coping to lower workforce turnover. Future research should investigate the effectiveness of these organizational practices.