Centro de Memoria y Cognición Intellectus, Hospital Universitario San Ignacio, Bogotá, Colombia.
Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Psychiatry and Physiology Department, Bogotá, Colombia.
Sci Rep. 2017 Jul 25;7(1):6391. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-06775-y.
Empathy is a complex cognitive and affective process that allows humans to experience concern for others, comprehend their emotions, and eventually help them. In addition to studies with healthy subjects and various neuropsychiatric populations, a few reports have examined this domain focusing on mental health workers, whose daily work requires the development of a saliently empathic character. Building on this research line, the present population-based study aimed to (a) assess different dimensions of empathy for pain in mental health workers relative to general-physicians and non-medical workers; and (b) evaluate their relationship with relevant factors, such as moral profile, age, gender, years of experience, and workplace type. Relative to both control groups, mental health workers exhibited higher empathic concern and discomfort for others' suffering, and they favored harsher punishment to harmful actions. Furthermore, this was the only group in which empathy variability was explained by moral judgments, years of experience, and workplace type. Taken together, these results indicate that empathy is continuously at stake in mental health care scenarios, as it can be affected by contextual factors and social contingencies. More generally, they highlight the importance of studying this domain in populations characterized by extreme empathic demands.
同理心是一种复杂的认知和情感过程，它使人类能够感受到对他人的关心，理解他们的情绪，并最终帮助他们。除了对健康受试者和各种神经精神人群进行研究外，还有一些报告专门研究了心理健康工作者的这一领域，他们的日常工作需要发展出明显的同理心特质。基于这一研究方向，本项基于人群的研究旨在：(a)评估心理健康工作者相对于一般医生和非医务人员对疼痛的同理心的不同维度；以及 (b)评估同理心与相关因素之间的关系，如道德特征、年龄、性别、工作年限和工作场所类型。与两个对照组相比，心理健康工作者对他人的痛苦表现出更高的同理心和不适感，他们更倾向于对有害行为进行更严厉的惩罚。此外，这是唯一一个同理心可变性可以用道德判断、工作年限和工作场所类型来解释的群体。总之，这些结果表明，同理心在心理健康护理环境中一直处于危险之中，因为它可能受到环境因素和社会偶然因素的影响。更广泛地说，它们强调了在具有极端同理心需求的人群中研究这一领域的重要性。
