Studying the Experience of Compassion Fatigue in Clinical Psychology Trainees in India

Abstract

Compassion Fatigue (CF), conceptualized as the cost of caregiving, or caregiver burden, poses a significant occupational risk for clinical psychology trainees, who face the compounded burden of client engagement and academic coursework, while being equipped with an underdeveloped coping resource, and professional skillset. Despite its global prevalence among helping professionals, CF remains critically underresearched among the trainee populations, especially within the Indian Mental Health context. This quantitative, correlational study examines the relationships between compassion fatigue and 3 theoretically grounded protective factors, namely, resilience, self-compassion (SC) and perceived organizational support (POS), among 25 clinical psychology trainees enrolled in MPhil or equivalent training programs across India. Data were collected using four validated psychometric instruments: Professional Quality of Life Scale (ProQOL-V), Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC-25), Neff's Self-Compassion Scale (SCS), and Eisenberger's Survey of Perceived Organizational Support (SPOS) in the form of a google-form survey questionnaire. Spearman’s ρ correlational analysis revealed that self-compassion demonstrated a highly significant negative association with compassion fatigue (ρ = − 0.54). SC’s components, self kindness and mindfulness emerged as its most protective aspects. Resilience was not directly correlated with the distress cluster, but showed a highly significant positive association with compassion satisfaction (ρ = 0.61). This suggests it functions as an indirect adaptive resource rather than a direct fatigue diminshming factor. POS did not yield statistically significant associations, a finding attributed to probable social desirability bias arising from methodological constraints. Descriptive and observational data further contextualised these patterns within the systemic challenges of India’s nascent mental health infrastructure. The findings highlight the importance of moving beyond simple distress-focused models of CF toward a holistic, component-level understanding in which distress and protection coexist at parallel, yet deeply interacting processes. The study has implications for training reforms, resilience-building interventions, and institutional policy that involve normalizing vulnerability and incorporating self-care practices within a CF-informed clinical training curriculum.