Burnout and Turnover Intention Among Peer Providers and Other Providers of Mental Health Services in a Rural Two-County Area

Peer providers in the mental health field, having their own lived experience with mental illness, use their personal experience to assist the consumers of their services. Given high burnout rates in the mental health field, there have been two prior investigations of burnout among peer providers. The present study extends those prior investigations to a sample of peer providers working in community mental health programs in a rural area of the United States. Consistent with the prior studies, there were no differences in burnout between peer providers and other providers employed by those programs, with particularly strong support for the null hypothesis regarding the emotional exhaustion component of burnout. There were also no differences in strength of turnover intentions. However, among the non-consumer providers emotional exhaustion was correlated with both types of turnover intention assessed in this study (intent to change job setting within the mental health field and intent to leave the mental health workforce), whereas among the peer providers emotional exhaustion was correlated only with intent to leave the mental health field. Workload dissatisfaction was the workplace variable most strongly associated with emotional exhaustion among both types of providers. Other moderately strong inverse predictors of emotional exhaustion among peer providers were workplace community and workplace control, and the correlation between emotional exhaustion and workplace control was significantly stronger among the peer providers than among the other providers.