While helping others, mental health counsellors risk experiencing burnout
If you work in a challenging professional role where you provide mental health care for your clients each day, you have to be supported in maintaining your own mental health as well.
Hélène Davis is a counsellor with Family Service Saskatoon (FSS) and a member of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 5316 in Saskatoon. Davis earned her graduate degree in social work from Memorial University of Newfoundland and has worked for FSS for 10 years. She is also a francophone and can interact with her clients in both French and English.
Family Service Saskatoon is a non-profit organization and its mission is to serve individuals, families and the community to nurture safe, healthy and respectful relationships.
As a community service agency, Family Service Saskatoon provides mental health counselling for clients ages five and up, including seniors. While the COVID-19 pandemic has put additional pressure on many people, Davis says “We have always had a very active caseload and we serve a large number of clients.”
In her role, Davis provides counselling, therapy and related services to individuals, couples, families and groups who are seeking relief from personal, interpersonal and social problems. This includes intimate partner violence and other trauma. In some cases, the situation is serious enough for the Saskatchewan legal system
to be involved. Family Service Saskatoon’s counsellors are often interacting with clients “at difficult times in their lives and in sad situations,” says Davis.
According to Davis, her job is demanding and one of the hardest parts is finding a balance between her clients’ needs and her own wellbeing. As challenging as it can be, Davis and her colleagues try re-energizing themselves in their downtime by spending time with friends and family, in their communities, as well as enjoying hobbies and other activities. In this way, FSS staff strive to show up each day for their clients and “come back to work with joy and hope.”
There is a need to address the level of stress and trauma that FSS staff deal with each day. CUPE Local 5316 members
need the time, space and resources to utilize their skill set and education to the best of their abilities, for the benefit of their clients.
“We need sufficient time during our work days and weeks, and in terms of annual leave, to do our jobs well, and then to nourish ourselves and to maintain our own levels of energy and positive mental health,” says Davis.
Best practices in social work and counselling include time during the workday to debrief and share with colleagues. High-calibre social work often involves collaboration among colleagues in order to best serve their
clients. When an agency is short-staffed and resources are limited, this collaboration and support are not always possible.
For CUPE Local 5316 members, mental health care is their number one priority. Stressful working conditions can adversely affect the mental health of social workers and counsellors. Davis notes that, “When clients describe themselves as anxious and depressed, it is often because they are yearning for better living conditions or more respectful treatment by the key people in their lives. If we are counselling others to seek justice, then we, ourselves, ought
to be experiencing supportive and fair conditions and/or working toward these.”
Davis and her colleagues also point out that, without fair wages and supportive working conditions, FSS staff risk becoming “a pink ghetto.” She describes a pink ghetto as a workplace where only women
with financially supportive partners can work because the salary by itself is not enough to support oneself or one’s family.
“We want people to be aware that while members of CUPE Local 5316 are helping others, they themselves are also experiencing burnout. They need more resources and more staff so they can recharge and continue to help others. Members of CUPE Local 5316 provide a vital service and are working towards a fair collective agreement for their members,” says Dolores Douglas, CUPE National Representative.
CUPE is Canada’s largest union with more than 700,000 members and 70 offices across the country. Find out more at about CUPE Saskatchewan at sk.cupe.ca.