Wellness, Career Sustaining Behaviors, and Burnout among Rural Counselor

Rural counselors encounter a host of occupational and environmental stressors that increase their risk for burnout and various forms of distress that can lead to impaired practice. Understanding factors that support rural counselor well-being is an important, yet underdeveloped area of empirical inquiry. This study examined wellness, career sustaining behaviors and burnout among 144 rural counselors from 14 states in the U.S. South. Measures utilized in this study included, the Five Factor Wellness Inventory (5F-WEL; Myers & Sweeney, 2005), the Career Sustaining Behaviors Questionnaire (CSBQ; Stevanovic & Rupert, 2004) and the Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey (MBI-GS; Schaufeli, Leiter, Maslach & Jackson, 1986). Results indicated a significant moderate, negative correlation between wellness and exhaustion, r = -.39, n = 135, p < .001, such that higher levels of wellness indicated lower levels of exhaustion. The study's implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.