ArticlePLOS mental health2025
Emotion regulation and compassion fatigue in mental health professionals in a context of stress: A longitudinal study.
Article in PLOS mental health, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Compassionate care at end of life and nurses' coping with the patient's death: a cross-sectional correlational study.International journal of nursing studies advances · 2026Article
- Compassion Fatigue as a Mediator Between Emotional Intelligence and Marital Anxiety Among Unmarried Mental Health Professionals Working in Family and Social Services.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Understanding compassion fatigue among child and adolescent psychotherapists: insights from a thematic analysis.BMC psychology · 2026Article
- Exploring links between sensory processing sensitivity, professional quality of life, and negative affectivity in clinical and counselling psychologists.PLOS mental health · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
introductionMental health professionals (MHP) are exposed to several stressors and have emotionally demanding jobs. They must effectively manage their emotions within their everyday practice. Emotion regulation is therefore a key element in understanding how MHPs can protect themselves psychologically. Abundant research shows that healthy and effective emotion regulation can protect against the negative impact of stress on compassion fatigue. However, this perspective does not consider the dynamic interaction that emotion regulation and compassion fatigue can have over time. A much less researched perspective is how compassion fatigue can change emotion regulation styles over time. The present research focused on this dynamic perspective.
objectiveWe took advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic, a stressful period for MHPs, to study the effect of perceived stress on the direction of the changes in emotion regulation styles and compassion fatigue over time.
methodsData on stressors, perceived stress, emotion regulation styles (i.e., dysregulation, integration, and suppression), and compassion fatigue were collected from 390 MHPs at two time points over ten months.
resultsFindings from a cross-lagged path analysis suggests that perceived stress predicted increases in dysregulation over time. Moreover, there were bidirectional longitudinal associations between dysregulation and compassion fatigue, with each predicting increases in compassion fatigue and dysregulation over time, respectively.
conclusionsThis study contributes to the limited research on the factors that influence how MHPs regulate their emotions and their susceptibility to compassion fatigue. Implications of emotion regulation for MHPs' own mental health and ability to do their work effectively are discussed.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.