NEW APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF BURNOUT SYNDROME OF CIVIL SERVANTS (ON THE EXAMPLE OF LAW ENFORCEMENT EMPLOYEES)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problem of researching the syndrome of professional burnout among civil servants on the example of representatives of law enforcement officers. The main aspects of positive psychology are considered and a new approach to the study of the above-mentioned phenomenon among this category of employees is substantiated. The latest psychodiagnostic inventory "Values in Action" was used in the study to identify "positive" character traits taking into account universal human virtues and individual psychological features (personal values/virtues that included in the classification of this technique are the following: wisdom, courage , humanity, justice, temperance, transcendence), developed by American scientists M. Seligman and K. Petersen, as well as methods for determining the presence of phases or symptoms of professional burnout syndrome and personality traits of law enforcement officers. It has been found that neuroticism, shyness, depression and emotional lability are characteristic of the subjects at the first stage of burnout syndrome, stress phase. At the stage of resistance, the second phase of professional burnout, law enforcement officers exhibit such properties as neuroticism, spontaneous aggressiveness, depression, irritability, reactive aggressiveness, shyness, openness and emotional lability. At the phase of exhaustion, the last stage of burnout syndrome, there is an aggravation of all personal characteristics of law enforcement officers, which were inherent for the previous two components of professional burnout – stress phase and resistance phase. There are statistically significant negative correlations between value "Humanity" and stress phase, as well as between exhaustion phase and such virtues as "Wisdom", "Courage", "Humanity".