The risk of burnout among workers providing social services to people with mental illness

The aim of the work is to map burnout syndrome and ways to protect against it. Subject of this work is focused on social workers specializing in providing care for people with mental illness. Therefore is examined burnout syndrome with regard to the working range of profession and to the specific target group. Except traditional definitions of burnout I deal with existential dimension of exhaustion and also the situation where the crisis may be supportive to growth. Finally, the work discusses ways to prevent burnout, how to balance energy expenditure, the importance of support from the professional and personal environment and people's own abilities to protect themselves. In a survey are used methods of Maslach Burnout Inventory. Results of the research and discovered values of burn rate are then compared with results of secondary questionnaire focusing on the level of support, expectations of employees and length of experience