Staff burnout is seen as a serious problem in caring for people who are seriously mentally ill (SMI). Burnout can be attributed to many factors such as type of patients, resources available, patient loads, hostility of the organization's environment, worker sources of self-acceptance, worker job involvement, self-esteem in the organization, and job satisfaction. Little can be done about client and environmental variables. Therefore, we will focus on those that are amenable to change, that is, management practices that contribute to goal congruence, making organizational consequences visible, participative coordination, and perceived worker autonomy that we hypothesize will contribute to worker self-esteem in the organization and job satisfaction. We further hypothesize that worker self-esteem and job satisfaction will help to explain burnout. We also hypothesize that case managers who have more evidence of burnout will tend to have less favorable client outcomes. Data from a survey of over 400 workers in 47 mental health organizations in Wisconsin will be available for analysis. We request funds to analyze the data, revisit each of the organizations to feedback and obtain further explanations of findings, and to do case studies of four organizations in different settings that have higher staff satisfaction, and less evidence of burnout. Survey analysis and case studies will suggest ways managers can minimize burnout of staff serving the SMI's.
