We ‘psychos’: On mental health among helpers

On 25 August 2026 the Austrian online newspaper derStandard published a guest essay entitled “We ‘psychos’: On mental health among helpers.” The piece was written by Monika Spiegel, a practicing psychotherapist and psychotherapy researcher, together with Sarah Schröckenstein, a recurring contributor to derStandard’s psycho blog. The authors combine a first‑person anecdote with a review of relevant literature and make a point of differentiating between professional roles such as psychotherapists, psychiatrists and clinical psychologists.

The essay is explicitly presented as a guest contribution and is not a primary research article. Its aim is to make visible an issue that repeatedly emerges in national and international discussions: the mental health of those who provide care. Spiegel’s anecdote is used to illustrate how proximity to suffering and the demands of clinical work can affect practitioners personally, while the co‑author’s contribution situates the problem within broader professional and scientific contexts.

A core argument of the authors is that titles and tasks in mental‑health professions are not interchangeable: training, legal frameworks and everyday responsibilities vary, and these differences shape both exposure to stressors and access to support when professionals need help. For example, the pathways to treatment, confidentiality arrangements and regulatory oversight differ between licensed psychotherapists and psychiatrists who are medical doctors.

The essay underlines that knowledge of mental disorders is no guarantee against developing such disorders oneself. Constant exposure to clients’ distress, high caseloads, administrative burdens and organisational pressures are named as potential drivers of burnout and other mental‑health problems among helpers. At the same time, professionals may face internal and external barriers to seeking help—concerns about stigma within their professional community, potential career consequences or the lack of confidential services geared specifically to practitioners.

The piece cites a COVID‑period study published in Scientific Reports (Nature) in 2023 that compared clinical psychologists with a representative sample of the Austrian population. That study reported lower adjusted odds ratios for symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress among clinical psychologists compared with the general population. The study exists and is part of a body of literature suggesting that, in some contexts, mental‑health professionals display lower symptom levels—potentially owing to factors such as professional training, access to coping strategies, or selection effects.

The authors also refer to epidemiological benchmarks, noting that roughly a quarter of the population can be affected by a mental disorder within a 12‑month period. That figure aligns in scale with estimates from the World Health Organization and European epidemiology reviews, and it is used in the essay to emphasise the overall burden of mental illness in society, rather than to make specific claims about particular professions.

From the authors’ perspective, the implications are organisational and structural rather than solely individual. They argue for measures such as regular and accessible supervision, confidential treatment pathways for professionals, limits on excessive caseloads and institutional arrangements that allow for restorative breaks. This argument reframes practitioner well‑being as a component of overall care quality: if helpers are overburdened, service delivery and patient safety can suffer.

The essay stops short of prescribing a detailed policy package. It instead functions as an appeal to professional associations, training bodies and policy makers to consider how funding, rules and workplace culture could be adjusted to protect the workforce. In public debate, proposals along these lines already circulate—ranging from anonymised therapy offers for health professionals to statutory protections against overload—but the guest essay focuses on sparking discussion rather than mandating specific reforms.

What is established is straightforward: the guest essay was published with bylines and date; the 2023 Scientific Reports study exists and reported lower adjusted odds for certain symptoms among clinical psychologists in its sample; and epidemiological estimates indicate substantial prevalence of mental disorders in the general population. Those are verifiable points the authors use as a basis for their reflections.

Uncertainties are also important. It is not clear how representative the clinical psychologists sampled in the 2023 study are of all professionals working in mental‑health settings across Austria, nor whether findings from the COVID period translate to other contexts or to long‑term trajectories. Selection effects are a plausible alternative explanation: individuals who enter and remain in these professions may differ systematically from the general population in ways that reduce measured symptom levels. Likewise, interventions proposed—such as increased supervision or confidential care pathways—have varying evidence bases for effectiveness when implemented at scale and under real‑world workplace constraints.

The essay therefore offers more a narrative and a call to action than definitive answers. It highlights an issue that combines personal, professional and systemic dimensions: how to ensure those who care for others receive timely, protected and effective care themselves. The next steps lie in targeted research—better occupational surveillance, longitudinal studies across professions—and in policy experiments that protect helpers without creating perverse incentives or unintended barriers to care.