Pro-Social Behaviour of Mental Health Professionals and Other Helping Professionals in Relation to Their Compassion Fatigue and Mental Well-Being

Pro-social behavior plays a crucial role in therapeutic and intervention settings. Involvement in prosocial behaviors such as helping, caring, sharing, and empathic responding may improve interpersonal relationships and psychological functioning. Constant exposure to the emotional fatigue of others may increase vulnerability to compassion fatigue. Compassion fatigue may affect the mental well-being of individuals working in helping professions. Despite growing interest in these areas, there is limited research studying interrelationships among different groups of helping professionals in India. The study, therefore, explores the relationship between pro-social behavior, Compassion Fatigue, and Mental Well-being using the Pro-Social Behavior Scale (PBS) (Caprara et al., 2005), the Warwick–Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (WEMWBS) by Warwick-Edinburgh & Compassion Fatigue-Short Scale (Adams, Boscarino, & Figley, 2006). As part of the study, 100 participants were selected, including 50 Mental Health Professionals and 50 other professionals using purposive sampling. The results reveal a very low negative correlation (r=-0.07) between Pro-social behavior and mental well-being, a positive correlation between Sharing and Mental Well-being (r=0.14), a positive correlation between Helping and Mental Well-being (r=0.27), a positive correlation between Caring and Mental Well-being (r=0.24), and a low positive correlation between Empathetic/Sympathetic reactions and Mental Well-being (r=0.19).

pro-social behavior, compassion fatigue, mental well-being, mental health professionals, other professionals

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