Hopelessness and Suicide Risk Emerge in Psychiatric Nurses Suffering From Burnout and Using Specific Defense Mechanisms

The authors investigated correlations of burnout & defense mechanisms with hopelessness in a sample of 120 Italian nurses working in psychiatric, general medicine/rehabilitation, & critical care/surgery wards. Nurses were administered the Maslach Burnout Inventory, Gleser & Ihilevich’s Defense Mechanisms Inventory, & Beck’s Hopelessness Scale. Results indicated that burnout & some of the defense mechanisms predicted the level of hopelessness – a predictor of suicide risk. (44 refs.) JA