Wellness Strategies for Burnout Prevention

Burnout is one of the most significant threats to the ability of human services professionals in effectively helping clients cope with crisis. It is a pernicious and rampant force within all helping professions, and the human services field—especially the specialties of crisis and intervention—is no exception. Crisis intervention work is intrinsically stressful. In the course of their crisis work, human services professionals inevitably encounter situations and circumstances that are shocking, horrific, heartbreaking, and/or tragic. Although human services professionals are trained to deal with these events, they nevertheless take a toll—sometimes an extreme one. Compounding the difficulties of the profession are organizational issues. Human services professionals often work within larger agencies and infrastructures. Issues such as bureaucracy, poor leadership, inadequate compensation, and lack of community or fairness can cause frustration, dissatisfaction, and apathy—all contributing factors to burnout. As a result, it is essential that human services professionals working in crisis and intervention are proactive in burnout prevention. Wellness strategies are methods, practices, or processes that human services professionals can implement to make it more likely that they will maintain their mental and physical health while working in challenging situations. By developing and implementing wellness strategies, human services professionals can help reduce the risk of burnout. The bottom line is this: in order to effectively take care of others, human services professionals also must take care of themselves.

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