Volume_6_Issue_4_Digest

8 TPC Digest Patrick R. Mullen, Daniel Gutierrez Burnout, Stress and Direct Student Services Among School Counselors S chool counselors are charged to spend 80% or more of their time in direct and indirect service to the student. Researchers have found that the facilitation of direct student services, such as those found within comprehensive school counseling programs, is positively related to academic success, personal and social development, career and college readiness, increased sense of belongingness, increased attendance, fewer hassles with other students, and less bullying. Therefore, the facilitation of student services is vital, as higher levels of services likely lead to better outcomes for students. Research on potential barriers to school counselors’ programmatic service delivery may shed light on ways to promote the facilitation of services for students, thus leading to enhanced educational outcomes. An area we believe may be a barrier to school counselors’ facilitation of direct student services is the stress and burnout they experience as part of their work. School counselors endure various difficulties related to their demanding and emotionally draining work. Stress can come from various sources such as multiple job responsibilities, role ambiguity, high caseloads, limited resources for coping, and limited clinical supervision. While the presence and sources of stress and burnout for school counselors may be of no surprise, the relationship between these forms of impairments and school counselors’ delivery of student services is important. Yet, there is limited research that examines the relationship between these variables. In this article, we report findings from a research study that examined the relationship between practicing school counselors’ ( N = 926) reported levels of burnout, perceived stress and their facilitation of direct student services. Specifically, in this associational research investigation, we recruited members of the American School Counselor Association using e-mail-based surveying techniques. We used structural equation modeling to test a hypothesized relationship between participants’ stress, burnout and their facilitation of direct student services. We also review descriptive statistics regarding participants scores on the measures used in this study. The findings from this study indicated that burnout was a statistically significant contributor to the frequency of direct counseling services and direct curriculum services. Furthermore, the findings identified that burnout was a significant contributor to participants’ reports of the percentage of time they spend on their job working directly with students. That is to say, participants with greater levels of burnout also facilitated lower levels of direct student services. Another finding of interest was that school counselors’ degree of perceived stress did not have a statistically significant relationship with the direct student services variables, but did correlate with burnout. Overall, participants reported low levels of burnout and stress, which is a promising finding. We believe that the results from this study provide additional merit for school counselors and school counseling supervisors to take steps to manage stress and prevent burnout. We recommend that researchers replicate these findings using more diverse samples and methods of assessing service delivery, stress and burnout. Also, we suggest future research on mechanisms to help school counselors manage stress and prevent burnout. Patrick R. Mullen, NCC, is an Assistant Professor at the College of William and Mary. Daniel Gutierrez, NCC, is an Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina – Charlotte. Correspondence can be addressed to Patrick Mullen, School of Education, P.O. Box 8795, College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA 23188, prmullen@wm.edu . Read full article and references: Mullen, P. R., & Gutierrez, D. (2016). Burnout, stress and direct student services among school counselors. The Professional Counselor , 6 , 344–359. doi : 10.15241/pm.6.4.344 8