Stresses reported by UK trainee counselling psychologists

Abstract

This study examined stressors and psychological distress in 109 UK counselling psychology trainees. The research focus was two-fold. What is the profile of stressors that counselling psychology trainees report about the components of training? What relationship is there between this profile, and other characteristics of trainees, including their level of current psychological distress? Data from a stress survey and from the General Health Questionnaire were examined. High stress scores were found on three aspects of the stress survey (‘academic’, ‘placements’, ‘personal and professional development’), but not–surprisingly–on the aspect, ‘lack of support systems’. Significant stress differences were reported for gender and age of participants, and highly significant positive relationships were found between General Health Questionnaire and stress scores. Overall, the results suggest actions to be taken. Further research is needed to clarify unavoidable and avoidable stressors in training, and the reduction of trainees’ experience of training stress to the necessary minimum needs to be adopted as an active target by programmes.

Keywords:

• stress
• trainee counselling psychologists
• General Health Questionnaire

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the help of participants and staff from the counselling psychology programmes at City University, London Metropolitan University, Regents College, Roehampton Institute, Surrey University, Wolverhampton University, and University of East London.

Notes

Note

1. Only statistically significant results are reported here (full details of analysis are available in Kumary, 2003. Considering the effect of multiple tests on Type I error probability, the criterion value for alpha at which significance is reported was set at p = 0.002. Given that a variety of tests was used, this value was decided by inspection.