Using a Student-Led Support Group to Reduce Stress and Burnout Among BSW Students

The Effects of a Group Supervision Intervention to Promote Wellness and Prevent Burnout

“…In this study, we found no differences between the treatment group and control group on the three subscales of burnout and overall wellness or on the five subscales of the 5F‐Wel after the intervention. In contrast to studies in other disciplines (e.g., Humphrey, ; Unterbrink et al, ), we did not find support for the intervention in improving wellness or reducing burnout in CITs. However, consistent with Wilkerson and Bellini's () research, we found that CITs in both groups experienced increased levels of emotional exhaustion from the beginning of the semester to the end.…”

“…Counselor educators and supervisors have an ethical obligation to assist supervisees in developing creative coping strategies and finding meaningfulness in their work with clients; however, the literature on effective interventions to prevent or reduce burnout among professional counselors is limited. Scholars in other helping professions (e.g., nursing, social work, teaching) have evaluated interventions that attempt to enhance personal characteristics that appear to mediate burnout risk (Galbraith & Brown, ; Humphrey, ; Unterbrink et al, ). Many burnout interventions appear to include a mix of information about stress, effective coping strategies, and providing a supportive environment for professionals to process stressors.…”

“…To address cognitive understanding of compassion fatigue, we designed a psychoeducational presentation to be conducted with the group. Similar to Humphrey's () study, we also included information about identifying burnout. The presentation included definitions of burnout (Pines & Maslach, ) and counselor risk factors (Skovholt, ), including compassion fatigue (Figley, ; Stebnicki, ) and vicarious trauma (Lawson, ).…”

“…Thus, we included information about wellness models (Myers & Sweeney, ; Witmer & Young, ) in the presentation. Previous researchers (Duquette et al, ; Galbraith & Brown, ; Humphrey, ) identified effective coping as an important skill in preventing burnout. We used the IS‐Wel model as a framework to assist CITs in developing coping strategies (i.e., wellness goals) from a holistic perspective.…”

Lessons Learned from Experiential Group Work Learning

“…Further, a 10-item Perceived Stress Scale measuring levels of stress, a single item measuring burnout, and narrative journal entries submitted by students were used to explore the effect of participating in a group on students' level of stress and burnout. Students reported benefitting personally from the groups and expressed lower levels of burnout (Humphrey, 2013). Evidently, the experiential groups achieved a didactic as well as a supportive purpose for the class members.…”