Burning-out and Drifting Away amongst School Psychologists:-Are There Antidotes?

Abstract

School psychologists who are exposed for several years to the realities and demands of professional school psychology, undergo an inevitable process of psychological erosion, which does not usually terminate in burn-out, but rather tends to be resolved through drifting away into another field of professional psychology, usually clinical psychology, which seemingly does not impose the same degree and qualities of professional stress. A whole array of factors are identified as highly pertinent to an analysis of the process of burning-out of school psychologists and their drifting away. The main factors inducing psychological erosion in school psychologists include: quantitative overload, qualitative overload, conceptual overload, contact overload, over exposure, psychological loneliness, role ambiguity, role conflicts and chronic identity crises. Two kinds of countermeasures against drifting away are proposed. One is aimed at 'inoculation' against professional disappointment during the period of university training which coincides with the phase of professional identity formation. The other countermeasure has to do with restructuring of the social-professional framework of task execution. Here we propose possible variants of the concept of the 'Psychological Task Force' (PTF) in the schools, which may replace the prevalent 'lonely hero' paradigm of operation.