Care Staff Burnout

Working in a psychiatric hospital has its own particularities when compared with other hospital structures. This is due to the nature of the patients being cared for, the relationship that develops between the carer and the patient, and the isolation that society creates and reinforces for patients with mental disorders and their carers. In the medical field, suffering, ill-being and illness are centred on and defined for the patient. Hospitals focus in particular on the patient-caregiver, his or her follow-up and the quality of the services provided, given that the patient is the bearer of somatic and/or psychological ill-being. But what about the carer, who suffers in the course of providing care? This is an issue that deserves particular attention. My work as a psychiatrist in a psychiatric environment has enabled me to see this suffering among my colleagues and to try to decipher it from a sociological angle other than a medical one.