158 The Professional Counselor | Volume 14, Issue 2 Table 5 Regression Results: Coefficients (secondary traumatic stress) β Std. Error Beta T Sig ACE < 4 (Constant) 26.661 3.813 -- 6.992 < .001 ACE 0.678 0.730 .101 0.929 = .355 Gendera -4.640 1.394 -.303* -3.330 = .001* Raceb -1.187 1.719 -.062 -0.691 = .491 Childhood SESc R2 = .164 (p = .001) 1.068 1.561 .069 0.684 = .495 ACE > 4 (Constant) 26.189 2.378 -- 11.015 < .001 ACE 0.858 0.273 .288* 3.146 = .002* Gendera 0.268 1.021 .025 0.252 = .794 Raceb 0.916 0.980 .086 0.934 = .352 Childhood SESc R2 = .145 (p = .004) 1.765 1.035 .163 1.705 = .091 Note. ACE = Adverse Childhood Experiences; SES = socioeconomic status. aFor statistical purposes in SPSS, we grouped gender as female, male, and transgender or other gender. ᵇFor race, we grouped PSCs as Minoritized and White. cFor Childhood SES, we grouped PSCs as lower or working class, middle-class, or upper middle/upper class. Discussion The purpose of this study was to establish the average rates of ACEs, compassion satisfaction, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress in PSCs as well as determine the extent to which PSCs’ own ACEs might predict compassion satisfaction, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress in a U.S. sample of school counselors. This study is unique in that it is the first to explore PSCs’ personal historical predictors and their relationship with job-related variables, both establishing the present rates of ACEs while also examining their potential to be risk factors for PSCs. As professional organizations (ASCA, 2022) and previous literature (Padmanabhanunni, 2020) noted the importance of having PSCs monitor their own wellness to ensure that their own trauma does not influence their work, this study provides a deeper understanding of how personal adversity may influence professional responsibilities. Minoritized PSCs in our convenience sample had significantly more ACEs than White PSCs, which is congruent with previous studies (Giano et al., 2020; Merrick et al., 2017). While Brown et al. (2022) established racial differences in ACEs for CMHCs for its sample, noting that racially minoritized CMHCs had higher ACEs scores than White CMHCs, in this study we established gender differences, in which female PSCs had higher rates of ACEs compared to male PSCs in the present study’s sample. This extends previous literature, which reported ACEs scores in aggregate for pediatric and adult populations (Boullier & Blair, 2018; Merrick et al., 2017). The most striking finding in our study was that 50.42% of PSCs in our convenience sample had four or more ACEs, which was slightly higher than the 43% that Brown et al. (2022) found in CMHCs, and significantly higher than the approximately 6% found in large U.S. and Austrian samples (Felitti et al., 1998; Riedl et al., 2020), suggesting PSCs may have a personal history that includes more ACEs than the general population. This is consistent with previous studies that have shown that those within mental health fields may tend to have higher
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