School Counselor Job Burnout

Assignment Discussion
Ethical Psychology 570

                                                     School Counselor Burnout

One area that could be identified as a common reason for unethical decision making in school counseling is burnout.

"School counselors like all mental health professionals are at high risk for burnout. High caseloads, job role ambiguity, and lack of supervision increase their propensity for burnout. Three areas were selected for study in this article due to their potential impact on burnout: Supervision, student-to-counselor-ratios, and non-guidance related duties. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were conducted and findings indicate non-guidance related duties and supervision are the best predictors of burnout."

        Based on the information stated here by Michael Moyer in his Journal of School Counseling article it seems clear that unethical decision making could occur on the part of a guidance counselor due to burnout that stems from incompetence to be able to do their job proficiently because they are forced to guide others without adequate sources of guidance themselves, plus added caseload work unrelated to their core duties.

"Given their many responsibilities, the various roles that school counselors inhabit, the importance of the work they do with students, and the complicated nature of the U.S. educational system, it is clear that school counselors are vulnerable to harmful levels of stress (Bryant & Constantine, 2006, Culbreth, Scarborough, Banks & Johnson & Soloman, 2005)."

        When harmful levels of stress start to take a toll on a person's emotional and physical well-being the ability to filter what they say and do becomes harder and harder and it continually widens the door for unethical mishaps to creep in.

"The Maslach Burnout Inventor -Educators Survey (MBI-ES; C. Maslach, S.E. Jackson, & M.P. Leitee, 1996) was used to examine burnout among professional school counselors (N=198). Guided by stress-strain-coping theory, final hierarchical regression models accounted for 49% of the variation in the emotional exhaustion scale, 27% on the depersonalization scale, and 36% on the personal accomplishment scale. Numerous individual stress & coping variables significantly predicted burnout among school counselors in the multivariate context."

        Emotional exhaustion is a depletion of one’s own energy to do any job let alone do it competently. Depersonalization is the ability to care about each student fairly without bias or prejudice no matter what the problem is and help them with respect to their individual needs always at the forefront of the counselors’ mind. Personal accomplishment being the ability to look at one’s self in the mirror and feel good about the things they have accomplished and what they plan to continue to accomplish as a counselor and person. These are extremely important to be able to be the best counselor a child needs and that you can be proud to be. Without the proper guidance about the job you’re going to undertake as to what the expectations are and the training to avoid burnout then incompetence to perform a quality job and ethical mistakes are bound to occur.

        If schools would simply ease the workload on school counselors with proper training and explanations of what their primary goals and focuses should be and divide the caseload amongst more than one counselor, then many of these issues would be avoided. Which, would free up mind space to keep filters intact which helps counselors and anyone from making bad decisions that considerable amounts of stress can lead people to make poor judgments and careless costly mistakes.

                                                    Works Cited and References:

• Moyer, M. (2011). Effects of Non-Guidance Activities, Supervision, and Student-to-Counselor Ratios on School Counselor Burnout [Abstract]. 9(5), 31. Retrieved October 28, 2016.
• Wilkerson, K. (2009). An Examination of Burnout Among School Counselors Guided by Stress-Strain-Coping Theory [Abstract]. Journal of Counseling and Development, 87, 428.
• McCarthy, C., Von Horn Kerne, V., Calfa, N. A., Lambert, R. G., & Guzman, M. (2010, February). An Exploration of School Counselors' Demands and Resources: Relationship to Stress, Biographic, and Caseload Characteristics [Abstract]. Professional School Counseling, 13(3), 146.