For therapists and psychiatrists, caring for and empathising with others is part of the profession. Therapeutic relationships require work and sensitivity, balancing emotional and social boundaries with the need for genuine connection and understanding. Like all relationships, managing therapeutic relationships takes effort and energy.
Sometimes, the emotional demands of the mental health profession can cause therapists and psychologists to put their own needs aside. But, like all people, mental health professionals also experience mental health challenges. These might be related to burnout at work, but also things outside of their profession: they may be connected to childhood trauma, family conflict, or relationship difficulties. When these challenges start to impact their daily lives or develop into mental health disorders, they require professional support.
And just as mental health professionals may require mental health support, so might professionals’ children and families. But professionals so often feel unable to reach out for help. Concerns around confidentiality, privacy, and stigma can act as barriers to accessing professional support.
At The Wave, we have extensive experience working with public figures across all fields, including medical professions. We provide expert support to children and families of therapists and psychiatrists, prioritising confidentiality and privacy alongside exceptional care.
This blog looks into why seeking mental health support is so important for mental health professionals, and what barriers therapists and psychiatrists face when accessing professional care.
Why Is Seeking Help So Important for Therapists and Psychiatrists?
The emotional and physical demands of mental health work can easily become overwhelming. This makes therapists and psychologists, who are already more likely than many other professions to have experienced trauma and hardship, increasingly vulnerable to developing mental health disorders. In some cases, mental health challenges can escalate into suicidality.
In this context, accessing additional support is fundamental in preventing mental health symptoms from developing or worsening, and supporting recovery when symptoms are already present.
Mental Health Professionals and Early Life Adversity
Many factors influence our career choices and the type of work we dedicate our lives to. But the work we find most meaningful often relates to our own experiences: to challenges we have faced that seed a desire for change.
It’s not surprising, then, that therapists have often grown up in difficult family settings where they’ve been exposed to interpersonal trauma. The lived experience of emotional distress often leads to a desire to help and support others in similar situations.
Research has found that psychotherapists reported higher rates of early life adversity and childhood trauma than other professionals, including abuse, loss of a family member, and family dysfunction. Experiencing childhood trauma greatly increases the risk of developing mental health disorders as adults and increases our vulnerability to stressful situations. This means that many psychotherapists are at a higher risk of mental health concerns.
The same study suggested that psychotherapists were often able to manage their mental well-being better than other professionals. They experienced lower levels of anxiety, depression, interpersonal difficulties, and dissociation. But while therapists may be able to apply some of their tools and skills to their own experience, self-help should only accompany, and never replace, support from others. Like everyone with mental health disorders, therapists and psychiatrists require the support of a therapeutic relationship to work through the challenges they face.
Understanding Burnout
Burnout can sometimes develop among professionals who work with other people in challenging situations. It’s a type of psychological syndrome characterised by:
- Emotional exhaustion
- Feeling overburdened
- Feeling like you’ve run out of emotional and physical resources
- Depersonalisation
- A negative attitude towards other people
- Loss of feeling of personal accomplishment
A review exploring burnout among mental health professionals across 33 different countries found that the average mental health professional experienced a high level of emotional exhaustion and moderate depersonalisation. Despite this, most maintained a feeling of personal accomplishment. The review suggested that overall, as many as 40% experienced professional burnout.
Burnout may be especially common among therapists or psychiatrists working in general adult-treatment settings, who lack autonomy at work. Certain aspects of the workplace may help to protect mental health professionals against burnout, such as autonomy, clinical supervision and a sense of being treated fairly.
Burnout is linked to a range of mental and physical health problems, including anxiety and depression. This leaves mental health professionals especially vulnerable to mental health disorders and often in need of additional support.
Suicidality Among Mental Health Professionals
When mental health challenges escalate, suicidal thoughts and ideations sometimes develop. Suicidality among mental health professionals is a serious concern that can result in suicide attempts and death by suicide.
Recent studies have emphasised that we don’t have exact data about the prevalence of suicidality among psychologists and other mental health professionals. But research suggests that the risk of suicide is higher in healthcare professions in general, compared to non-healthcare professions. Within healthcare professions, certain fields, including psychiatry, may be especially vulnerable.
In this context, it’s vital that mental health professionals access additional support as soon as they need it. Early intervention can prevent mental health challenges from intensifying and escalating into crisis situations. But it’s never too late to seek support, and in instances of suicidality, immediate professional care may be life-saving.
Suicide Prevention
If you are feeling suicidal, there are people who would like to help. You could talk to a friend, family member, or someone else you trust about your feelings. You can also call a phone line for confidential support:
- Samaritans – call 116 123
- Papyrus (for people under 35) – call 0800 068 4141
While speaking to a professional can feel stressful, it’s a step towards caring for yourself. Doctors and other mental health professionals may be able to help you feel better about parts of your life that feel bad right now.
Why Do Mental Health Professionals Often Feel Unable to Reach Out for Help?
Mental health professionals dedicate their lives to offering mental health support. They understand more than anyone the importance of additional support in navigating and recovering from mental health symptoms. So why do we so often feel unable to reach out for help ourselves?
There are several different barriers that may prevent counsellors, psychologists and psychiatrists from seeking additional support. These include confidentiality, job security, stigma, self-diagnosis, and mental health symptoms themselves.
Confidentiality and Job Security
Mental health professionals share both professional and personal relationships with others in the community. Professional associations, conferences, collaborations, referral systems, and trainings bring many of us together, building strong networks that enable teamwork, skill sharing, and more effective services.
But within this context, mental health professionals may have concerns about confidentiality when reaching out for support. They may worry that information about their therapy will be shared with, or otherwise reach, their workplace and colleagues. This can lead to concerns surrounding job security and whether knowledge about their mental health challenges might impact their position.
In a professional context, however, confidentiality should always be upheld, and any breach of privacy is a serious violation.
Equally, while mental health professionals may worry about how receiving therapy reflects on their competency, it’s important to remember that seeking personal therapy is widely encouraged within mental health literature and psychotherapy practice. In some settings, participating in therapy is even mandatory. Aside from supporting mental health professionals through mental health challenges, receiving therapy can increase self-awareness, empathy, and relational skills – all of which are invaluable in the mental health profession.
Internalised and Professional Stigma
Unfortunately, there is still widespread societal stigma surrounding mental health. While in recent years, mental health awareness and continued efforts by numerous parts of society have led to a substantial decrease in stigma, it remains a challenge both within and outside the healthcare profession.
Internalised stigma develops when individuals start to believe and apply negative attitudes towards mental health disorders to themselves. This can impact their self-perception, self-esteem, and ultimately their practice. Although mental health professionals have usually developed a comprehensive understanding of mental health, they are nevertheless exposed to myths and misconceptions on a daily basis. This means that internalised misconceptions may impact their self-concept and self-esteem, even in situations where such misconceptions are contradicted by their own knowledge.
Internalised stigma can cause a lack of self-confidence and feelings of guilt or shame surrounding mental health. This may prevent some psychologists and therapists from reaching out for support, instead encouraging them to stay silent.
Professional stigma and the fear of the social reaction of colleagues can also act as a barrier to seeking help. Therapists and psychologists may be concerned about stigma within the healthcare profession and how they will be treated at work. They may worry that colleagues will perceive them as less competent, unreliable, or difficult.
Sadly, this stigma prevents many people – both within and outside the healthcare profession – from receiving effective support when they need it.
Self-Diagnosis
Therapists and psychiatrists have a broad and deep understanding of mental health disorders. Many are trained to make accurate diagnoses in at least some specialities, which may overlap with their own mental health experiences.
With this knowledge, some mental health professionals are tempted to self-diagnose, rather than seeking the support of another professional. They might observe their symptoms, name their condition, and access self-help or other resources that fit their own understanding of their symptoms. Some psychiatrists may prescribe themselves medication.
However, it’s widely accepted that medical professionals shouldn’t diagnose or treat themselves. Not only is it difficult – and sometimes impossible – to obtain an objective perception of one’s own symptoms, it also makes the treatment process more vulnerable to internalised stigma and other harms. For example, in a self-help process, there isn’t an external figure to insist on the importance of starting or staying in treatment, or to talk through feelings like shame that may act as barriers to receiving support.
Mental Health Symptoms
Mental health disorders often bring feelings of shame, guilt, low self-esteem, fatigue, and low self-worth. These are also common features of burnout.
These emotions can have a profound impact on mental health professionals’ self-concept and behaviours. They may feel like they don’t deserve help and support, or put their own needs below everyone else’s. Fatigue can make help-seeking and treatment processes feel like too much to handle, while anxiety can increase fears about confidentiality and stigma.
Given all the internal barriers that can arise for seeking additional support, it’s all the more important to establish a robust culture of help-seeking among mental health professionals. Receiving treatment should be supported, encouraged, and normalised at all levels of the profession.
Treatment for Children and Families of Therapists and Psychiatrists
Just as therapists and psychiatrists may experience mental health challenges, so can their families. Unfortunately, many of the barriers to seeking personal support also impact the way mental health professionals seek support for children or families. Often, personal and family challenges are interconnected: the mental health of each family member influences the family system, and the family system, in turn, affects each individual member.
This means that in situations of family trauma, conflict, or adolescent mental health challenges in their families, therapists and psychiatrists’ own mental health is also likely to be affected.
Concerns about privacy, confidentiality, and professional stigma can discourage mental health professionals from accessing additional support for their children or families. Likewise, internalised stigma, such as misconceptions that mental health challenges in their family are their own fault, can be a barrier to seeking support.
A 1987 study exploring mental health problems in families of mental health professionals found that psychologists, social workers, and psychiatrists tended not to feel comfortable discussing their experiences with colleagues. Many said they would share their experiences with only a few people whom they expected to understand. The study also found that, despite being psychologists themselves, many prioritised self-help groups over individual or family therapy. Concerns about stigma and confidentiality may have played a role in these decisions.
The Wave Clinic: Our Experience With Medical Professionals
At The Wave Clinic, we provide mental health support where confidentiality, privacy, and non-judgment are guaranteed. We have extensive experience working with public figures in all fields and supporting medical professionals.
We understand the importance of offering mental health services where individuals and families are not afraid of facing stigma. In providing such services, we dismantle some of the barriers to help-seeking, making it easier for all kinds of people to access the support they need.
From our treatment spaces in Kuala Lumpur and Dubai, we offer specialist programs for children, adolescents, young adults and families living with mental health concerns. We provide a diverse selection of treatment modalities in outpatient and residential settings. Our programs are trauma-focused and family-centred, compassionate and sensitive.
Our programs include family intensives and parenting intensives that combine the experience of several months of therapy into a few days or weeks.
If you’re interested in our spaces and programs, reach out to us today.
