The Relationship Between Wellness and Burnout in School Counselors

The results of the studies in the literature show that counselors experience burnout due to the nature of their work. In order to prevent burnout in counselors, it seems important to study the variables that determine it. Although this issue has been studied with different demographic and psychological variables in the literature, no study has been found in Turkey regarding the wellness variable. Therefore, this study sought an answer to the question of whether the wellness of counselors predicts their burnout. For this purpose, a total of 147 school counselors were reached and data were collected through the Personal Information Form, Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) and Well Star Scale (WSS). MBI has three sub-dimensions: emotional exhaustion, desensitization and personal accomplishment. WSS consists of five sub-dimensions: social, cognitive, emotional, physical and life meaning and goal orientation (LMGO). Stepwise regression analysis was used in the analysis of data. According to the results of the regression study, it is understood that the total score of the WSS and the sub-dimensions of social, cognitive, emotional and LMGO predict different dimensions of burnout. The total score of the WSS predicts all three sub-dimensions of burnout. When examined in terms of the sub-dimensions of the WSS, it is understood that social wellness predicts emotional exhaustion; emotional wellness predicts desensitization and the sub-dimensions of LMGO and cognitive wellness predict personal accomplishment. The findings are discussed according to the literature and some suggestions are presented for new research and applications.