Clergy Burnout & Compassion Fatigue – Learnings

This resource offers learnings gleaned from this research by Jacobson, Jodi, et. al. “Risk for Burnout and Compassion Fatigue and Potential for Compassion Satisfaction Among Clergy: Implications for Social Work and Religious Organizations” Journal of Social Service Research (39:455-468, 2013). 

• Clergy are front-line mental health providers.
• Studies show that on average clergy spend 15% of their time providing pastoral counseling [or spiritual support] – based on a 50-hour work week, this equates to more than 138 million hours of counseling service annually.
• Clergy (like social workers) are at increased risk for work-related stress and negative outcomes from trauma work, such as burnout and compassion fatigue. Limited training and unfamiliarity with community mental health resources contributes to this reality.
• Resistance to referral between clergy and social workers due to lack of knowledge of resources suggests more work needs to be done to develop collaborative approaches to this common work.
• Burnout is associated with a gradual onset of hopelessness, work overload or difficulty and decreasing levels of job satisfaction.  Feelings of disillusionment and despair are symptomatic of burnout which is aided by constant changes within ministry roles and vocational tasks, which can lead to a sense of overwhelm.
• Early 2000’s survey of 1000 pastors should that 50% considered leaving their positions within the 3 months prior to completing the survey. This was considered then to be a indication of a coming crisis in pastoral leadership.
• Compassion fatigue is described as a “natural, predictable, treatable and preventable consequence of working with suffering people.” This is the result, of working with traumatized people.  Clergy are susceptible because they often counsel people in crisis exposing them to stressful situations and traumatic stories.
• Compassion fatigue can have a rapid onset or develop slowly over time.\
• Symptoms of compassion fatigue include intrusive thoughts and images, avoidant behaviors and unwanted reminders of traumatic events.
• Compassion fatigue is exacerbated by role confusion, role overload and lack of formal education in psychosocial interventions.
• Compassion Satisfaction – despite the risk for burnout and compassion fatigue clergy also report high levels of satisfaction with their vocations. This is also true for trauma counselors. (This may be due to “survival bias”).
• Clergy exhibit higher levels of depression which can also exacerbate burnout and compassion fatigue. 
• Demographic and organizational characteristics of congregations that are associated with burnout include: age, years working, gender, job & salary satisfaction and congregation size.
• Younger clergy and those with less experience in ministry are more likely to experience symptoms of burnout most likely due to not having developed good coping skills for particular vocational stressors
• Smaller congregation size can contribute to burnout because of greater work demands and role ambiguity among clergy.  Younger clergy are more often called to smaller congregations.  
• The literature is split on the issue of gender, with some research reporting that male clergy are at a higher risk for burnout.
• Low salaries is often directly related to job satisfaction contribute to burnout and are also associated with increased work and family stress.
• Recent research shows that increased years ordained or years ministering predicted higher levels of burnout and decreased potential for compassion satisfaction.
• The presence of depression is highly associated with the potential for burnout and decreased compassion satisfaction.