Boundary Setting of Mental Health Professionals: Its Relationship to Self-Care, Burnout, and Well-Being
Abstract
Setting boundaries between personal and professional life is a common piece of advice given to many professionals due to an assumption that it can positively impact one’s life. From a mental health perspective, though, there is a lack of empirical research studying how boundary setting relates to constructs like self-care, burnout, or well-being. Furthermore, there are few psychometrically validated measures to measure boundary setting. This study seeks to address both gaps in the literature. First, a new survey was created, the Personal-Professional Life Boundary Setting Survey, and its psychometric properties were examined using exploratory factor analysis. This process resulted in a final three factor structure of Segm, PersInt, and ProfInt. Second, this study examined the relationship of boundary setting with self-care, burnout, and well-being, using the Self-Care Assessment for Psychologists, the Maslach Burnout Inventory, the Satisfaction With Life Scale, and the Flourishing Scale. Structural equation modeling (SEM) analyses were used to examine the relationship between the multiple factors in each measure. Overall, segmentation was found to relate positively with all aspects of self-care and well-being. Professional interference on personal life was found to relate negatively with self-care and well-being but positively relate with burnout. Personal interference on professional life was related with diminished feelings of personal accomplishment.
Subject
boundary settingboundary theory
instrument/measure development
confirmatory factor analysis (CFA)
self-care
burnout
well-being
structural equation modeling (SEM)
mental health professional
Citation
Yin, Caroliina He (2022). Boundary Setting of Mental Health Professionals: Its Relationship to Self-Care, Burnout, and Well-Being. Doctoral dissertation, Texas A&M University. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /197728.