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Background: Burnout is significantly high among helping professionals and poses serious risks to one’s mental and physical health. Despite the high stress of environmental activists’ work and the importance of their role, there is little research on their mental health. Environmental activists protect the mental and physical health of the general population by advocating for environmental justice, pushing for large-scale changes to impede climate change, and providing education and resources for communities to navigate climate change-related events. This preliminary study aimed to contribute to the literature by gathering more information about burnout among environmental activists. Methods: A mixed methods framework employed a quantitative survey and qualitative individual interviews to ascertain the rates and experience of burnout from the point of view of the activists themselves. Activists were recruited from organizations throughout New York State that focus on climate change, climate justice, and environmental justice in community settings. Burnout, the main dependent variable, was measured with the Maslach Burnout Inventory. Independent variables included psychological distress, climate change-related anxiety, perceived organizational support, a variety of psychosocial workplace factors, and styles of coping. Correlation analyses were used to assess the relationship between burnout mean scores and mean scores on each of the independent variables. Qualitative interview data were analyzed by inductive Thematic Analysis and findings were organized and presented with the additional use of Consensual Qualitative Research (CQR) frequency methods. Results: Thirty-two participants completed the survey and eight activists agreed to subsequently complete the qualitative interview. Quantitative scales showed moderate burnout comprised of high emotional exhaustion and decreased feelings of accomplishment, and low depersonalization. Psychological distress was generally mild and climate change anxiety was high, but not impairing. Activists rated perceived organizational support as high and workplace factors as satisfactory. Emotional exhaustion was positively correlated with psychological distress and demands at work, and negatively correlated with perceived organizational support, interpersonal relationships and leadership, social capital, and health and wellbeing. Feelings of personal accomplishment were positively correlated with work organization and job contents, interpersonal relationships and leadership, and adaptive coping styles, specifically the use of emotional support, use of institutional support, and planning. Depersonalization was positively correlated with maladaptive coping styles involving denial, behavioral disengagement, and self-blame. The qualitative study interviews identified eight thematic areas associated with the experience of burnout, risk and protective factors, and factors unique to activism, activism and personal identity, and activism and current events. Qualitative outcomes aligned with quantitative outcomes, clarifying motivations for engaging in activism and experience of activism. Conclusions: This exploratory study helps illuminate important factors relevant to environmental activists’ mental health and offers recommendations for future research and mental health organizational policies. Future studies are needed with greater sample size, systematic sampling, and multiple assessment points, to better determine predictive relationships between these variables and burnout.

Suicide rates have been relatively constant in Australia for over a hundred years, albeit peaking in 1997 and since returning towards historically average levels. Suicide now represents the commonest cause of violent deaths and exceeds deaths from motor vehicle accidents and armed conflict. There have been a number of national programs following the lead of Finland in the 1980s. Modern research has clearly demonstrated many of the risk factors, but they lack specificity in terms of prediction, and therefore the numbers needed to demonstrate the effectiveness of any intervention are particularly daunting. This makes research problematic and it is probably impossible to ever get Level 1 evidence because of the large numbers and expense required. Therefore many research studies are either epidemiologically oriented or directed to crisis care and treatment algorithms. Rural suicide presents particular challenges because of the increasing numbers of young and elderly men who take their lives, the lack of services available locally and the paucity of research in rural societies, with it usually being confined to examining risk factors and comparing them with urban populations. This thesis describes an approach to rural suicide which, whilst cognisant of the broad range of risk factors, was more directed to tackling poor mental health on a community basis, utilising local resources. It used four main approaches: educating the community to enhance mental health literacy by appreciating the causes of poor mental health; building the social capital or community capacity of existing resources; emphasising early identification and intervention of problems; and the establishment of a community child and adolescent program based in the local school, but with close liaison with the local medical practitioners. The educative approach to mental health literacy was to engage the whole community as widely as possible with special programs for general practitioners, nurses, and teachers; community capacity and social capital were increased by teaching the community warning signs, techniques to engage and refer to known entry points into the system; early identification was undertaken by screening for poor mental health within the doctors’ office, the hospital and the school; and a child and adolescent program was devised to detect dysfunctional students, formulate an assessment and management plan, and then evaluate the outcome. The most important results were a statistically significant reduction of suicides from twelve in ten years to one in the following decade, as well as a statistically significant reduction in the number of suicide attempts. In addition there was the establishment of a primary mental health service within the community which was independent of specific government finance and resources. / http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1292809 / Thesis(M.D.)-- School of Medicine, 2007.