You don’t need us to tell you this, but graduate school is a very challenging, demanding, and stressful time. While it hopefully is one of the most exciting, stimulating, and invigorating times of your life, you also must contend with stressors associated with being a graduate student as well as those in your personal life, […]
I recently attended a faculty awards ceremony at my university. The faculty award recipients, along with the audience, watched videos of remarks and comments from the awardees’ students and colleagues. All of the remarks were expectedly heartwarming and lovely; however, I could not help to notice a trend in each of the videos. Nominators remarked […]
Steve Ragusea, a long-time psychologist friend, keeps reminding me that “clinician burnout” is a major public health hazard in today’s healthcare environment. The National Academy of Medicine’s report “Taking Action Against Clinician Burnout: A Systems Approach to Professional Well-Being” fully supports his view, finding that between 35 and 54 percent of the nation’s nurses and […]
As a newly minted post-doctoral fellow, I have repeatedly encouraged junior trainees to eat lunch, talk about their pets, get candy from my candy bowl, or offer to get them coffee if I am already headed out to get my own. At its core, I am trying to model and foster self-care amongst trainees in […]
In the hectic pace of being an early career psychologist (ECP) and junior faculty member, it is often more possible to extol the virtues of self-care rather than to authentically engage in it. In many cases, this challenge may partially stem from limited education and insufficient opportunity to develop effective self-care habits during doctoral training. […]
The creation of art is known to offer a variety of benefits for physical and mental well-being, but in our rush to categorize production of art as “self-care,” we may be overlooking the most essential piece. This article explores the idea that dismissing the work of passion as one more task to check off a […]
At times, I can be really bad at asking for help. This trait, for better or worse, is most likely a byproduct of a variety of factors in my life, most notably playing sports, my history of asthma, and my identity as a young Black professional. As athletes, we are conditioned from an early age to persevere and ignore thoughts of quitting or “taking a break” in order […]
I remember sitting in an ethics course during my fourth year of my doctoral program and listening to the professor reminding us that the self-care practices we establish in graduate school are the ones we maintain for our careers. I wondered how on earth I was supposed to live a healthy and balanced lifestyle while […]
Psychology predoctoral interns face many challenges, as difficult roles and competing expectations may lead to burnout. Edelwich (1980) defined burnout as “a progressive loss of idealism, energy, and purpose by people in the helping professions as a result of the conditions of their work” (p. 14). Common factors contributing to burnout include difficult cases, feeling […]
Studies have found burnout is prevalent among mental health workers (Paris & Hoge, 2010), with 21% to 67% endorsing “high” levels of burnout (Morse, Salyers, Rollins, Monroe-DeVita, & Pfahler, 2012). Burnout occurs when individuals are unable to effectively cope with high levels of prolonged occupational stress. Burnout can be characterized by three distinct dimensions: emotional […]