Affiliations 

  • 1 Department of Psychology, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK
  • 2 Department of Psychology, Kyoto Notre Dame University, Kyoto, Japan
  • 3 Clear Sky Psychology, UK
  • 4 Jeffrey Cheah School of Medicine & Health Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne, Malaysia
  • 5 School of Social and Health Sciences, Leeds Trinity University, Leeds, UK
  • 6 Institute of Psychology, Université Paris Descartes, France
Psychol Health Med, 2020 Aug 05.
PMID: 32755397 DOI: 10.1080/13548506.2020.1804599

Abstract

Mental health practitioners in many developing countries are faced with high job demands and a lack of institutional support. Given their high levels of work-related stress, it is important to identify mechanisms that help them to maintain psychological well-being and job satisfaction. Recent research has focused on the role that positive orientation (POS) may play in mediating the negative impact of stress on individual well-being. The present study investigated whether POS predicts mental health practitioners' perceived levels of stress, mental health and job satisfaction. If POS measures a person's tendency to take a positive attitude to life and their ability to cope with difficulties, a high POS could be linked to reduced levels of stress and increased levels of job satisfaction and well-being. This study examined associations between self-reported POS and psychological outcomes in a sample of 100 Malaysian mental health practitioners. The results showed that POS significantly predicted job satisfaction positively and mental health issues and perceived stress negatively, even when socio-demographic variables were controlled. Overall, we found a strong effect of POS on individual functioning across the sample of mental health practitioners. Our results have implications for improving practitioner wellbeing and job satisfaction.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.