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Exploring Well-Being among Mental Health Professionals in India

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Abstract

An exploratory mixed methods study was designed to understand the construction and experience of happiness and well-being among Mental Health Professionals (MHPs) in India. Through non-probabilistic sampling techniques, 17 MHPs were selected from three government hospitals in a city in North India. Qualitative interview data were triangulated with scores from the Mental Health Continuum-Long Form (MHC-LF). Analysis showed that despite happiness being a desirable and pleasurable state, participants rarely devoted time thinking about it. Happiness was a multidimensional phenomenon which affected personal, interpersonal, social and environmental realms. Happiness was synonymous with contentment and satisfaction and was understood as the opposite of unhappiness. Although recognised as a universal phenomenon, happiness had a subjective and individual-specific understanding, experience and manifestation. Data from the MHC-LF provided scores on overall well-being, and emotional, psychological and social well-being, and indicated that 14 participants had flourishing mental health, and three were moderately mentally healthy. The personal and professional lives of the MHPs were closely intertwined and impacted well-being in multiple ways. Certain temperamental qualities, personal insight from the field, supportive interpersonal relations and management of time, work, thought, behaviour and affect were protective factors of well-being. Additional responsibilities at work, negativities in client narratives, stigma and myths associated with the profession, biases from other professionals, lack of opportunities for personal development and growth, insufficient infrastructural and human resources were threats to well-being. The findings of the study have implications for policy, education and training, and practice for mental health practitioners.

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Notes

  1. The terms happiness and well-being are used interchangeably in this paper as researchers in the past have seen a parallel between the two concepts (Biswas-Diener, Tay & Diener, 2012; Singh & Modi, 2011).

  2. The names of all the participants have been changed in order to protect anonymity.

  3. The minimum possible score on the MHC-LF was 39, and the maximum was 271.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, United States of America

    Pankhuri Aggarwal

  2. The School of Human Ecology, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

    Sujata Sriram

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  1. Pankhuri Aggarwal
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  2. Sujata Sriram
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Correspondence to Pankhuri Aggarwal.

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This paper draws from the first author’s thesis completed at Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, under the supervision of the second author.

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Aggarwal, P., Sriram, S. Exploring Well-Being among Mental Health Professionals in India. Psychol Stud 63, 335–345 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12646-018-0470-x

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