Harm reduction workers facing burnout amid dual crises: ‘Too emotionally fraught’

Battered not only by the ongoing overdose crisis but also with challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, harm reduction workers across Canada are struggling with burnout.

Battered not only by the ongoing overdose crisis but also with challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, harm reduction workers across Canada are struggling with burnout, experts say.

“We are going to lose a generation of harm reduction workers to burnout because of the unrelenting nature of this crisis,” Gillian Kolla, postdoctoral fellow at the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at the University of British Columbia, told Global News.

“People who care deeply about working with people who use drugs, who have worked in this field for a very long time, are finding they can’t do this work because it’s just too emotionally fraught,” she said.

A 2022 report from the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction found the drug toxicity crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic are largely to blame for the higher levels of burnout those in the harm reduction field are facing.

“I love my job and simultaneously wish it didn’t have to exist. I couldn’t imagine doing nothing about the overdose crisis. It is an honour to be paid for something I am so passionate about, but also hard to be engaged in what seems like such an endless battle with governments to value the lives of people like me,” a harm reduction worker in the report noted.

A study released last year specifically focusing on Toronto also found profound impacts on harm reduction workers.

“It’s important to recognize that some emotions that we have as humans in response to seeing other humans suffer, and the loss and grief that comes about it, that’s a normal reaction,” said Kolla.

“The scale of the crisis is the problem.”