Public servants’ mental health can impact how, how well, and to whom services are delivered. In this article, we extend the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) framework to consider whether employees’ perceptions of themselves, their co-workers, and beneficiaries predict higher psychological distress during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through a survey of state and local public servants (n = 3,341), we report alarming rates of psychological distress: one in three employees are burnt out and one in five are experiencing compassion fatigue. Those who view government as the place to make a difference, and those who perceive co-workers as competent, are less likely to report distress. Those who attribute poverty to systemic factors, and not to individual flaws of beneficiaries, experience higher distress. These findings suggest an urgent need to prioritize public servant mental health, and show that individual perceptions of self and others can predict variation in psychological distress, even in periods of widespread crisis.

公务员的心理健康会影响提供服务的方式、质量和对象。在本文中，我们扩展了工作需求-资源 (JD-R) 框架，以考虑员工对自己、他们的同事和受益人的看法是否会预测 COVID-19 大流行期间更高的心理压力。通过对州和地方公务员的调查（n = 3,341），我们报告了令人震惊的心理困扰率：三分之一的员工精疲力尽，五分之一的员工正在经历同情疲劳。那些将政府视为发挥作用的地方的人，以及那些认为同事能胜任的人，不太可能报告痛苦。那些将贫困归因于系统性因素而不是受益人个人缺陷的人会经历更大的痛苦。这些发现表明迫切需要优先考虑公务员的心理健康，并表明个人对自我和他人的看法可以预测心理压力的变化，即使在广泛的危机时期也是如此。