Counselor Burnout during COVID-19: Predictive Role of Cognitive Emotion Regulation

Pages:258-262
Tarika Sandhu and Harjinder Singh (Department of Psychology, Punjabi University, Patiala, Punjab)

The burden on counselors has tremendously amplified during the COVID-19 pandemic. Isolation, contactless work settings, work overload and economic shutdown vividly imposed a drastic change in counselors work environment. It is assumed that the COVID-19 pandemic would have greater adverse results for early-in-career counselors as they have not fully acquired personal agencies of protection against unprecedented stressors otherwise acquired through experience. From amongst the obvious challenges, counselors in the early phase of their careers are also facing discrepancies between their abilities and workload, ethical conflicts of providing services to the most needy over others (due to limited personal capacities), unsatisfactory acknowledgment and ill defined work outcomes due to the pandemic. An imbalance in self-care and personal stress management could create the risk of burnout in counselors .The present study focused on the role of cognitive emotion regulation strategies in predicting burnout among early career counselors during the COVID-19 pandemic. The sample for the study comprised of 64 counselors (Males=17, Females=47) who were in the early stages of their career. The Counselor Burnout Inventory by (Lee et al., 2007) and Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire by (Garnefski et al., 2002) were used for gathering information related to the psychological indices. Regression analysis revealed that the indices of Positive reappraisal and Other-blame negatively predicted Burnout. Implications of the study point towards counselors strengthening their cognitive emotional regulation strategies to evade burnout and provide high quality services to clients during the COVID-19 pandemic.