Over the years, a body of empiricism and conceptual frameworks has burgeoned related to the emotional toll often exacted on mental health practitioners engaged in the helping field—an emotional toll often denoted as burnout and compassion fatigue. This article delineates the concepts of burnout and compassion fatigue and their adverse, often catastrophic, effects on mental health practitioners’ personal and professional functioning when left unaddressed. The article also highlights the more recent research relating to the changes and challenges brought about by the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic and its exacerbation of burnout and compassion fatigue among mental health practitioners. Finally, the article highlights practical, empirically validated, and efficacious self-care strategies for individual practitioners and organisations to utilise in preventing and mitigating the adverse effects of burnout and compassion fatigue. The latter are: walking or other forms of exercise; engaging regularly in mindfulness and meditation practices; seeking support from family and friends; engaging in pleasurable activities, such as taking a holiday and socialising; and personal psychotherapy. The top five best practice strategies for office/practice managers are: instituting reasonable working hours and caseloads for mental health practitioners; optimising working spaces and consulting rooms; providing adequate break times throughout the working day; providing ample opportunities for peer support, clinical supervision, and other debriefing initiatives; and facilitating occasional team-building and wellbeing days.
{"title":"The Adverse Effects of Burnout and Compassion Fatigue Among Mental Health Practitioners: Self-care Strategies for Prevention and Mitigation","authors":"Natalie Salameh","doi":"10.59158/001c.71210","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.59158/001c.71210","url":null,"abstract":"Over the years, a body of empiricism and conceptual frameworks has burgeoned related to the emotional toll often exacted on mental health practitioners engaged in the helping field—an emotional toll often denoted as burnout and compassion fatigue. This article delineates the concepts of burnout and compassion fatigue and their adverse, often catastrophic, effects on mental health practitioners’ personal and professional functioning when left unaddressed. The article also highlights the more recent research relating to the changes and challenges brought about by the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic and its exacerbation of burnout and compassion fatigue among mental health practitioners. Finally, the article highlights practical, empirically validated, and efficacious self-care strategies for individual practitioners and organisations to utilise in preventing and mitigating the adverse effects of burnout and compassion fatigue. The latter are: walking or other forms of exercise; engaging regularly in mindfulness and meditation practices; seeking support from family and friends; engaging in pleasurable activities, such as taking a holiday and socialising; and personal psychotherapy. The top five best practice strategies for office/practice managers are: instituting reasonable working hours and caseloads for mental health practitioners; optimising working spaces and consulting rooms; providing adequate break times throughout the working day; providing ample opportunities for peer support, clinical supervision, and other debriefing initiatives; and facilitating occasional team-building and wellbeing days.","PeriodicalId":394035,"journal":{"name":"Psychotherapy and Counselling Journal of Australia","volume":"49 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128856845","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article examines disavowal, or half-knowing, of climate change from the standpoint of the Australian counselling profession. It argues that the field in Australia has yet to make climate change a professional duty of care or ethical issue. It also looks at the role of disavowal in the lack of engagement with climate change in society more broadly. Mapping out the existing vicious cycle that disavowal triggers in relation to climate change, it introduces an alternative, virtuous cycle. It argues that noticing and containment of distress are key ingredients to shifting into a virtuous cycle, and examines strategies for relational, agentic, cognitive, and spiritual containment. Acknowledging that climate distress appears to be at significant levels in the community, but may not be seen so often in counselling contexts, it argues for counsellors to be more sensitive to possible climate distress without presuming its presence or absence. Implications for practice include a need for ongoing reflexivity and an acceptance of our own climate disavowal.
{"title":"Turning Towards Our Desire to Turn Away: Climate Disavowal in the Context of the Australian Counselling Profession","authors":"N.A. Azuri","doi":"10.59158/001c.71205","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.59158/001c.71205","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines disavowal, or half-knowing, of climate change from the standpoint of the Australian counselling profession. It argues that the field in Australia has yet to make climate change a professional duty of care or ethical issue. It also looks at the role of disavowal in the lack of engagement with climate change in society more broadly. Mapping out the existing vicious cycle that disavowal triggers in relation to climate change, it introduces an alternative, virtuous cycle. It argues that noticing and containment of distress are key ingredients to shifting into a virtuous cycle, and examines strategies for relational, agentic, cognitive, and spiritual containment. Acknowledging that climate distress appears to be at significant levels in the community, but may not be seen so often in counselling contexts, it argues for counsellors to be more sensitive to possible climate distress without presuming its presence or absence. Implications for practice include a need for ongoing reflexivity and an acceptance of our own climate disavowal.","PeriodicalId":394035,"journal":{"name":"Psychotherapy and Counselling Journal of Australia","volume":"158 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122697384","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The practice of gestalt therapy and the training of its practitioners have undergone significant change since the early 1950s. The culture they are situated in is also undergoing significant change. The main goal of this paper is to articulate the nature of contemporary gestalt therapy, the practice of gestalt professional education, and selected aspects of the contemporary cultural context within which they are situated. The central theme of the paper is the tension existing between the values of gestalt therapy and particular features of the culture, especially neoliberalism. This paper is drawn from a PhD project exploring how this tension is understood and managed in Australia and New Zealand. It sets the scene for a proposed later paper discussing detailed responses to these tensions. It is hoped this paper offers ground for psychotherapists, counsellors, and educators to reflect on their experiences and possible tensions.
{"title":"Contemporary Gestalt Psychotherapy: The Tensions Between Practitioner Education and the Current Cultural Context","authors":"Paddy O'Regan","doi":"10.59158/001c.71211","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.59158/001c.71211","url":null,"abstract":"The practice of gestalt therapy and the training of its practitioners have undergone significant change since the early 1950s. The culture they are situated in is also undergoing significant change. The main goal of this paper is to articulate the nature of contemporary gestalt therapy, the practice of gestalt professional education, and selected aspects of the contemporary cultural context within which they are situated. The central theme of the paper is the tension existing between the values of gestalt therapy and particular features of the culture, especially neoliberalism. This paper is drawn from a PhD project exploring how this tension is understood and managed in Australia and New Zealand. It sets the scene for a proposed later paper discussing detailed responses to these tensions. It is hoped this paper offers ground for psychotherapists, counsellors, and educators to reflect on their experiences and possible tensions.","PeriodicalId":394035,"journal":{"name":"Psychotherapy and Counselling Journal of Australia","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122334273","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
With the demand for mental health services in Australia continuing to grow, it is imperative that tertiary trained counsellors continue to enter the profession; yet little is known about the factors that contribute to a successful entry. This qualitative, phenomenological study investigated the transition from postgraduate counselling student to working counsellor by exploring the lived experience of those who have made this transition within the last five years. By focusing on the transitional experience itself, the study aimed to provide useful information for stakeholders holding key roles in such transitions—specifically students, academic institutions, professional bodies, and employers of counsellors within Australia. While results suggest that many factors affected the transitional experience, students’ practicum placement played a disproportionately large role in determining their early career path. Other important factors included the background of the individual, their experiences while studying, and the professional support in place once they had started working. This study also identified that students’ expectations of what it might be like to work as a counsellor in private practice were not always aligned with lived experience. It is hoped that knowledge about what has been valuable to recently transitioned early career counsellors will be of ongoing benefit to all stakeholders.
{"title":"The Transition From Postgraduate Counselling Student to Working Counsellor: A Qualitative Investigation","authors":"C. Lamb","doi":"10.59158/001c.71059","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.59158/001c.71059","url":null,"abstract":"With the demand for mental health services in Australia continuing to grow, it is imperative that tertiary trained counsellors continue to enter the profession; yet little is known about the factors that contribute to a successful entry. This qualitative, phenomenological study investigated the transition from postgraduate counselling student to working counsellor by exploring the lived experience of those who have made this transition within the last five years. By focusing on the transitional experience itself, the study aimed to provide useful information for stakeholders holding key roles in such transitions—specifically students, academic institutions, professional bodies, and employers of counsellors within Australia. While results suggest that many factors affected the transitional experience, students’ practicum placement played a disproportionately large role in determining their early career path. Other important factors included the background of the individual, their experiences while studying, and the professional support in place once they had started working. This study also identified that students’ expectations of what it might be like to work as a counsellor in private practice were not always aligned with lived experience. It is hoped that knowledge about what has been valuable to recently transitioned early career counsellors will be of ongoing benefit to all stakeholders.","PeriodicalId":394035,"journal":{"name":"Psychotherapy and Counselling Journal of Australia","volume":"43 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134418185","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This psychotherapy case study examines the brief therapeutic journey of a young woman presenting with academic anxiety and the flexible person-centred approach adopted by her therapist, the author. Application during therapy sessions of concepts from humanistic therapy and beyond, such as configurations of self and imagining future possible selves, enabled the client to unravel her anxiety and eventually discover the underlying tension existing between her internal versus external locus of self-evaluation and self-worth, leading her to contemplate her overall social identity and future life choices. The study aimed to stimulate in the client open reflection about how an internal dialogue between parts of the self may reveal underlying internal tensions and how envisaging possible future selves can help identify how self-criticism may be socially and culturally conditioned. This study, being a single-client study, was tailored for the specific therapeutic goals and personality of the client, and thus the generalisability of this therapeutic approach is limited. However, the study aims to shed light on how we may better support through psychotherapy and counselling students at elite universities with a working-class background, who commonly struggle to “fit in” to this environment and make sense of their changing present and future social identity.
{"title":"Exploring the Future Social Identity of a PhD Student Dealing With Anxiety: A Psychotherapy Client Study","authors":"Nicholas P. Sarantakis","doi":"10.59158/001c.71207","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.59158/001c.71207","url":null,"abstract":"This psychotherapy case study examines the brief therapeutic journey of a young woman presenting with academic anxiety and the flexible person-centred approach adopted by her therapist, the author. Application during therapy sessions of concepts from humanistic therapy and beyond, such as configurations of self and imagining future possible selves, enabled the client to unravel her anxiety and eventually discover the underlying tension existing between her internal versus external locus of self-evaluation and self-worth, leading her to contemplate her overall social identity and future life choices. The study aimed to stimulate in the client open reflection about how an internal dialogue between parts of the self may reveal underlying internal tensions and how envisaging possible future selves can help identify how self-criticism may be socially and culturally conditioned. This study, being a single-client study, was tailored for the specific therapeutic goals and personality of the client, and thus the generalisability of this therapeutic approach is limited. However, the study aims to shed light on how we may better support through psychotherapy and counselling students at elite universities with a working-class background, who commonly struggle to “fit in” to this environment and make sense of their changing present and future social identity.","PeriodicalId":394035,"journal":{"name":"Psychotherapy and Counselling Journal of Australia","volume":"199 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127597542","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Women’s friendships have long had cultural and psychological significance, particularly in the maintenance of positive social and emotional wellbeing. Inexplicable dissolution of these relationships correlates with a significant disruption of core human needs and mental health outcomes. Empirical research has found that ostracism, a variant of interpersonal rejection, is a distressing event since adult friendship attachment patterns are comparable to intimate partner relationships. In the field of mental health counselling and psychotherapy, theory can be an important precursor to intervention, but which theories and interventions may be suitable for post–friendship dissolution? Relational-cultural theory, a counselling and developmental framework, considers a broad range of psychological, social, healing connection, and relational experiences in the lives of women. Relational experiences starved of mutual empathic responses may evoke prolonged rumination in the friendship dissolution phase. In this regard, mentalisation-based treatment can help repair mental state affect such as prolonged rumination and restore emotion regulation. This is an unresearched topic that requires further investigation.
{"title":"Interpersonal Rejection, Ostracism, and Mentalisation in Women’s Friendships: Clinical Implications for Rumination","authors":"Deborah J. Oehlman Forbes","doi":"10.59158/001c.71206","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.59158/001c.71206","url":null,"abstract":"Women’s friendships have long had cultural and psychological significance, particularly in the maintenance of positive social and emotional wellbeing. Inexplicable dissolution of these relationships correlates with a significant disruption of core human needs and mental health outcomes. Empirical research has found that ostracism, a variant of interpersonal rejection, is a distressing event since adult friendship attachment patterns are comparable to intimate partner relationships. In the field of mental health counselling and psychotherapy, theory can be an important precursor to intervention, but which theories and interventions may be suitable for post–friendship dissolution? Relational-cultural theory, a counselling and developmental framework, considers a broad range of psychological, social, healing connection, and relational experiences in the lives of women. Relational experiences starved of mutual empathic responses may evoke prolonged rumination in the friendship dissolution phase. In this regard, mentalisation-based treatment can help repair mental state affect such as prolonged rumination and restore emotion regulation. This is an unresearched topic that requires further investigation.","PeriodicalId":394035,"journal":{"name":"Psychotherapy and Counselling Journal of Australia","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115766394","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
With eating disorder treatment options gaining traction in Australia due to increased government funding for dietician and counselling sessions, psychotherapists and psychologists /are called to position themselves as an authoritative force within the therapeutic space. The current paper rejects this notion and uses personal and professional reflection on eating disorder treatment to suggest narrative therapy as a primary treatment option for eating disorders. Narrative therapy upholds collaboration between client and counsellor, rather than the clinician exalting an expert position. Its principles allow the client to centre themselves as the author of, and protagonist within, their life. Further, narrative therapy offers a dismantling of dominant discourse that may sustain limiting descriptions of the client and thereby discount the complexity and intersectionality of an individual’s life and identity. Through the narrative therapy tool of therapeutic letter writing, the author—a psychotherapist herself—tracks her experience of, and recovery from, anorexia and bulimia as a process of reversing the panopticon that is often sustained by the contemporary health care sphere.
{"title":"Reversing the Panopticon: On Narrative Therapy and Its Place in the Treatment of Eating Disorders","authors":"Megan Buys","doi":"10.59158/001c.71209","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.59158/001c.71209","url":null,"abstract":"With eating disorder treatment options gaining traction in Australia due to increased government funding for dietician and counselling sessions, psychotherapists and psychologists /are called to position themselves as an authoritative force within the therapeutic space. The current paper rejects this notion and uses personal and professional reflection on eating disorder treatment to suggest narrative therapy as a primary treatment option for eating disorders. Narrative therapy upholds collaboration between client and counsellor, rather than the clinician exalting an expert position. Its principles allow the client to centre themselves as the author of, and protagonist within, their life. Further, narrative therapy offers a dismantling of dominant discourse that may sustain limiting descriptions of the client and thereby discount the complexity and intersectionality of an individual’s life and identity. Through the narrative therapy tool of therapeutic letter writing, the author—a psychotherapist herself—tracks her experience of, and recovery from, anorexia and bulimia as a process of reversing the panopticon that is often sustained by the contemporary health care sphere.","PeriodicalId":394035,"journal":{"name":"Psychotherapy and Counselling Journal of Australia","volume":"35 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115299026","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Editorial: Listening to Lived Experience","authors":"Jean I. Marsden","doi":"10.59158/001c.71201","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.59158/001c.71201","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":394035,"journal":{"name":"Psychotherapy and Counselling Journal of Australia","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115877984","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Guest Editor’s Note: Achieving Climate Justice: A Practitioner Call to Action","authors":"Gávi Ansara","doi":"10.59158/001c.71054","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.59158/001c.71054","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":394035,"journal":{"name":"Psychotherapy and Counselling Journal of Australia","volume":"35 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133315146","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Supporting Transgender Autistic Youth and Adults: A Guide for Professionals and Families (2020) by Finn V. Gratton. Jessica Kingsley Publishers. ISBN: 9781785928031","authors":"L. Spence","doi":"10.59158/001c.71063","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.59158/001c.71063","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":394035,"journal":{"name":"Psychotherapy and Counselling Journal of Australia","volume":"45 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128421471","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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