Emotional exhaustion and its relationship with suicide risk in emergency responders

The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the relationship between emotional exhaustion and suicide risk in emergency responders. Participants included 643 actively employed emergency responders who responded to an online research based survey. Participants were administered the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI; Maslach & Jackson, 1981) and the Suicide Behaviors Questionnaire (SBQ-R; Osman, Bagge, Gutierrez, Konick, Kooper, & Barrios, 2001). Using a categorical measure of emotional exhaustion, responders reported a statistically significant increased suicide risk [F(2, 640) = 45.01, p < .001] between levels of emotional exhaustion. Post hoc analysis confirmed significant differences between each level of emotional exhaustion with a significant increase of risk at each category (Low [M = 4.60, SD= 2.38], Moderate [M = 5.56, SD= 2.50], High [M = 6.95, SD= 3.26]). Emergency responders with high levels of emotional exhaustion had an average suicide risk score approaching the significant risk cut-off of 7.