2026-09-26T09:44:30Zhttps://mro.massey.ac.nz/server/oai/requestoai:mro.massey.ac.nz:10179/732302025-11-12T14:01:08Zcom_10179_294col_10179_296
DSpace at Massey University
author
Matheson, Siobhan
2025-07-21T21:48:52Z
2025-07-21T21:48:52Z
2025
https://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/73230
The demanding nature of psychologists’ work and their exposure to distressing content, puts them at high risk of experiencing stress outcomes. Self-care is widely accepted as important for preventing stress outcomes such as burnout; however, surprisingly few studies have investigated the link between self-care and burnout among psychologists. Further, despite ethical imperatives to engage in self-care, psychologists tend to have a chronic disregard for their own needs and limited research has investigated factors that increase psychologists' engagement in self-care. One promising factor that may enhance self-care and buffer burnout is self-compassion. Prior research within other helping professionals has linked self-compassion with promoting self-care and reducing burnout. However, almost no research has investigated the benefit of self-compassion for psychologists or considered the relationships between these three factors. This research explored self-compassion’s relationship with self-care and burnout in psychologists, as well as whether self-compassion was a moderator of the relationship between self-care and burnout. Currently registered and practicing New Zealand and Australian psychologists (n = 197) were recruited through convenience sampling. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that self-compassion had a significant, positive relationship with both professional and personal self-care in psychologist and that both self-compassion and self-care had significant, negative associations with burnout. Psychologists with greater self-compassion tended to have higher engagement in both professional and personal self-care along with lower levels of burnout. Moderation analysis showed that self-compassion was also a significant moderator of relationship between self-care and burnout, such that self-compassion strengthened the negative relationship that self-care had with burnout in psychologists. Specifically, as psychologists’ level of self-compassion gets higher, the negative relationship between self-care and burnout gets stronger. These results highlight self-compassion as a valuable resource for enhancing self-care practices and buffering burnout within psychologists. This research extends the finding that self-compassion is positively associated with self-care to a population of New Zealand and Australian psychologists, and it provides an initial foundation for new ways of looking at the relationship between self-care and burnout with respect to self-compassion.
en
The author
How can we Improve self-care practices and reduce burnout within New Zealand and Australian psychologists? : examining self-compassion and its link to self-care and burnout : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Psychology at Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand
Thesis
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URL
https://mro.massey.ac.nz/bitstreams/853a445f-582a-4ac5-abf9-024b4a9b3c08/download
File
MD5
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application/pdf
MathesonMAThesis.pdf
URL
https://mro.massey.ac.nz/bitstreams/92c67d34-75b8-46e7-b57e-f02a8d0004db/download
File
MD5
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text/plain
MathesonMAThesis.pdf.txt