[Stress and burnout among Tunisian teachers].

Burnout, or professional exhaustion syndrome, is defined as a state of emotional, mental and physical exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress at work. Despite the fact that it is not a recognized disorder in the DSM-IV, burnout has been widely described among medical and paramedical staff. In Tunisia, all the studies about this syndrome have only considered populations of doctors. However, professional exhaustion syndrome is not only limited to the medical sector, but can also be seen in any profession involving a relation of help. Thus, the teaching profession seems to be concerned with this syndrome. In fact, in our clinical practice, we are increasingly confronted with teachers' suffering. The latter face increasing difficulties in their work and moreover some of them can no longer resist and thus become vulnerable to the professional exhaustion syndrome. The aim of this study was to evaluate burnout among a population of Tunisian teachers and to examine the professional stressors associated with teachers' burnout. Our study was a transversal study conducted over five months (from October 2009 to February 2010) and it concerned teachers working in the public high schools of Manouba (Tunisia). The participants completed a self-questionnaire dealing with professional stressors. Five types of professional stressors were identified in the literature: bad working conditions, work overload, administrative difficulties, organizational factors and difficulties with pupils and their relatives. They were also explored by the scale of the burnout: the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), which is the best-studied measurement of burnout in the literature. We used the French version of the MBI adapted to educational settings. It is a scale composed of 22 items and three dimensions: emotional exhaustion (nine items), dehumanization (five items) and reduced personal accomplishment (eight items). In our study, we considered a teacher was suffering from burnout when at least two among the three dimensions of this scale were pathological. From the total number of teachers working in public high schools of Manouba (n=876), only 398 teachers filled in our questionnaires. Hence the rate of participation was 45.4%. The mean age of those participants was 40.04 years. 52.3% of them were women (sex ratio=0.91) and the great majority was married (81.8%). The burnout syndrome was found in 21% of those teachers: Moderate professional exhaustion was found in 16.4% of cases and severe professional exhaustion was found in 4.6%. A high emotional exhaustion was found in 27.4% of cases. A percentage of 16.1 of participants had a high dehumanization and 45.5% of them were susceptible to reduced personal accomplishment. The majority of teachers (66.4%) declared being stressed at work. The professional stressors reported by the teachers were in decreasing order of rate: bad working conditions (80.3%), overload work (75.2%), administrative difficulties (70.4%), difficulties with pupils and their relatives (64.4%) and finally organizational factors (57.1%). In our study, we found a strong association between burnout syndrome among teachers and three types of professional stressors which were: bad working conditions (p=0.0017), administrative difficulties (p=0.005) and difficulties with pupils and their relatives (p=0.005). The organizational factors and the work overload were not associated with the burnout syndrome. The job of teaching accumulates many difficulties. Some Tunisian teachers cannot tolerate this professional stress and develop a burnout. This syndrome leads to a teachers' psychological distress with the risk of an increase in absenteeism at work. So, we hope that this study will give rise to future research on stress, coping and burnout among Tunisian teachers, with theoretical aims as well as practical applications to prevent and reduce the risk of this problem.

Chennoufi L ，Ellouze F ，Cherif W ，Mersni M ，M'rad MF ... -  《ENCEPHALE-REVUE DE PSYCHIATRIE CLINIQUE BIOLOGIQUE ET THERAPEUTIQUE》

[Burnout and victimisation: impact of inmates' aggression towards prison guards].

Prison is typically considered as a dangerous setting partly because of promiscuity and violence, which leads to a whole series of suffering and frustration among prisoners. Due to their occupation, prison guards must ensure the safety of the inmates, their colleagues, as well as any other persons working in prison and in the prison setting. Thus, correctional guards are the "Bumper excitement" of prison violence and suffer from stressful and traumatic events. Indeed, inmates' sufferings and frustration are firstly expressed towards them because they share daily relationships with inmates. In addition, correctional guards are faced with the high inmate suicide risk. One potential consequence of these chronic stressful situations is burnout. Burnout is described as a three-dimensional syndrome composed of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and sense of lack of personal accomplishment. Burnout is a severe psychological suffering, which can lead to depression. It has been initially identified among persons who are working with patients. Nevertheless, research shows that burnout is not a psychopathology of work but of the relationship with others. In other terms, burnout seems to arise when people share stressful, chronic and violent relationships with someone else. Burnout doesn't appear per se in any international classification of mental disorders: clinicians often use the diagnosis of adjustment disorder. Our aim is to assess the impact of victimization on burnout among guards in French prisons. Prison guards were chosen for two major reasons. First, the custodial role of correctional officers is typically described as a stressful occupation, sensitive to burnout. Second, prison is generally considered "dangerous". Indeed, victimizations and aggressions frequently occur. Consequently, we hypothesize that burnout levels will be high for prison guards. We also hypothesize that the intensity of the victimizations (verbal, physical or armed aggression) will heighten burnout levels. Two hundred and thirty-five prison guards were involved. Among these 235 correctional guards, there were 46 women and 188 men, ranging from 22 to 56 years old. Victimizations were very common: more than 87 % had experienced an aggression, whether verbally, physically or armed. They were asked to fill out the French form of the Maslach burnout Inventory (MBI). The MBI is a 22-item self-report measurement that assesses the three dimensions of burnout: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and personal accomplishment. Items are rated on a 7-point scale ranging from 0 ("never") to 6 ("every day"). We have statistically created a new global level of burnout with the three dimensions. It is called "burnout level". We have assessed two sets of independent variables (VI): demographic VI (age, sex, tenure, level of studies) and correctional VI (penal status of prison, victimizations). Regarding our dependent variables, we have four levels which are (1) global burnout (GB), (2) emotional exhaustion (EE), (3) depersonalization (D), and (4) personal accomplishment (PA). For the purpose of our study, we carried out variance analyses (Anova) in order to compare the averages of our groups of subjects. Further to Anova, we chose the Bonferroni/Dunn post hoc test. The results indicate that demographic variables such as age, sex or level of studies have no significant effect on GB, EE, D and PA levels. Tenure has a significant effect on GB and D levels. Concerning correctional variables, results show that the penal status of prison has a significant effect on GB and EE. Prison guards working with inmates incarcerated for more than 5years report higher GB and EE than their counterparts working with inmates not already convicted. Victimizations have a significant effect on GB, EE, D and PA levels. Prison guards with physical or armed aggressions report higher global GB, EE, D and PA levels than prison guards without aggressions. Furthermore, prison guards with physical or armed aggressions report higher global GB and D levels than prison guards with verbal aggressions. Two major points are highlighted by our study. First, characteristics of prison and inmates are related to burnout among prison guards. Second, victimizations lead to burnout.

Boudoukha AH ，Hautekeete M ，Abdellaoui S ，Groux W ，Garay D ... -  《ENCEPHALE-REVUE DE PSYCHIATRIE CLINIQUE BIOLOGIQUE ET THERAPEUTIQUE》

Burnout in academic chairs of otolaryngology: head and neck surgery.

Johns MM 3rd ，Ossoff RH 《LARYNGOSCOPE》

Job stressors, personality and burnout in primary school teachers.

Kokkinos CM 《-》

Burnout in chairs of academic departments of ophthalmology.

Cruz OA ，Pole CJ ，Thomas SM 《-》