J. For. Sci., 2017, 63(2):70-74 | DOI: 10.17221/111/2015-JFS

Prevalence of burnout among forest workers in Mazandaran, IranOriginal Paper

Majid LOTFALIAN¹, Fatemeh SHEIKHMOONESI², Mahbobeh SABZI¹, Mahbobeh ABASPOUR¹, Saba PEYROV^*,1

¹ Department of Forestry, Faculty of Natural Resources, Sari University of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, Sari, Iran

² Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Research Center, Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences, Sari, Iran

Burnout imposes consequences and costs on the organization and employees, such as frequent job and workplace replacement, frequent absenteeism and permissions, and reduced work quantity and quality. So it seems necessary to perform institutional interventions to reduce the staff burnout. The aim of the present study was to determine prevalence of burnout among forest workers in Mazandaran. This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted on a sample of workers in the forests of Mazandaran province. Result showed that a significant proportion of workers had burnout in terms of the three dimensions of Maslach Burnout Inventory. 46.90% of respondents suffered from high emotional exhaustion, 43.36% had high depersonalization and 49.56% of respondents suffered from low personal accomplishment. In this study it was shown that people with bachelor or higher degree (compared to people with a lower education level) were in better conditions in terms of all three dimensions of burnout; they had higher personal accomplishment and higher emotional exhaustion and lower depersonalization. It was shown that burnout is highly prevalent among chainsaw operators and skidder drivers.

Keywords: Maslach Burnout Inventory; emotional exhaustion; personal accomplishment; psychological stress

Published: February 28, 2017  Show citation