Effectiveness of Online Therapy to Prevent Burnout (Preprint)

Abstract

Burnout or mental health exhaustion is a hidden productivity killer in organizations today. Finding a solution to efficaciously measure, identify causes and company exposure, and to proactively prevent and to rehabilitate employees with Burnout is a major challenge. To accomplish this digitally is even more challenging, especially as demand and the effects of COVID-19 outgrow the support services. In order to meet this unabated demand, companies and caregivers need to focus on proactive measures to prevent “Burnout as an Occupational Phenomenon” from further escalation.

This study aims to address the reliability and validity of the Empowerment for Participation (EFP) batch of assessments to measure Burnout risk in relation to the efficacy of online interventions to provide proactive rehabilitation using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and floating to achieve improved mental health and wellbeing. The study will also briefly introduce three risk assessments: Risk for Burnout, Risk of Anxiety and Risk for Depression, as well as an employee Engagement Potential measure.

An interventional, empirical and parallel design using raw EFP psychometric data to measure the effectiveness of online therapy to reduce the risk for Burnout between a control group and an online therapy group. The aim is to test whether or not there is a statistically significant difference in the effectiveness on online therapy to reduce the Risk for Burnout compared to that of a Control Group. Fifty participants were randomly selected. The rehabilitation and control Group consisted of twenty-five normally distributed employees (N25) each. The rehabilitation group received therapy, and the control had not yet received any form of therapy. SPSS was used to analyze the data collected, a Repeated Measure ANOVA, an ANCOVA, a Discriminant analysis, and a Construct Validity analysis were used to test for Reliability and Validity. However similar in nature, both methods (ANOVA & ANCOVA) were used to reject the null hypothesis. The group was randomly selected from a list of employees within the My-E-Health ecosystem. The group (N50) normally distributed group met all assumptions and consisted of a Control Group (N25) and a Therapy Group (N25). The post assessment value was used as the dependent variable. The Burnout measure (30 questions) is obtained from the Empowerment for Participation (EFP) batch of assessments (110 questions). All assessments and CBT were done digitally online and floating was done at a designated location. The full EFP assessment is integrated into a digital ecosystem designed for this purpose and therapy. The online digital system is an integrity-based platform offering both the employee and caregiver a secure and encrypted ecosystem. It is a secure tunnel or channel between the therapists and patients.

The Null Hypothesis can be rejected. There is a statistically significant difference between the pre-assessment and the post-assessment scores for Burnout between the groups. Online therapy is effective in reducing Burnout. Reliability of the Burnout Measure was good (α = .858, M = 1.826, SD = 3.008, d = .607, P < .001) with a high validity = .9420. A Paired Samples Test shows a good t score of 4.292, P < .001 with a good effect size d = 0.607. Online therapy reduced the risk for Burnout compared to the control group. Tests of Between-Subjects Effects shows F = 16.964 significantly significant difference between the Control Group and the Online Therapy Group: P < .001 with movement between the group variables of .261 or 26.1% for the dependent variable.

This original study suggests good reliability and validity in using online Interventional CBT to reduce the risk of Burnout. The Empowerment for Participation (EFP Batch) of online assessments can reliably identify morbidity risk levels and successfully measure clinical interventions and rehabilitation with consistently reliable results to serve as both a diagnosis and therapeutic tool worthy of major research in the future.

NCT05343208 Ethics Registration: EPN Lund DNR2017/761 (Regional Ethics Committee, Lund Sweden)