A Handbook to Guide School Psychology Graduate Students in Developing a Self-care Plan
Author: Burlinda Seals
Publisher:
Published: 2019
Total Pages: 100
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKBoth graduate school and the professional role of a school psychologist are demanding and extremely stressful. The rate of burnout for school psychologists at some point in their professional careers is nearly 90% (Randolph & Boan-Lonzo, 2017), while 70% of professional psychology graduate students report stress that is severe enough to interfere with their functioning (El-Ghoroury, Galper, Sawaqdeh, & Bufka, 2012). The best way to inoculate oneself against the effects of these stressors is to develop a strong self-care habit; 80% of those graduate students in professional psychology programs that reported habitually engaging in behaviors of self-care were more successful than those that did not (Colman et al., 2016). However, roughly 30% of graduate programs in psychology even mention self-care in their graduate handbooks, and the handbooks that did mention self-care did so only in the context of distressed students seeking support from a counselor (Zahniser, Rupert, and Dorociak, 2017). This project is a handbook designed to aid graduate students in building their self-care practice into one that will benefit them throughout their professional lives. Specifically, this project examines the physical areas of self-care: diet, exercise, and sleep. The National Association of School Psychologists identified physical self-care as one of three main areas of an effective self-care routine. The project was developed in consultation with a fellow graduate student, who is designing a conjoint project that focuses on the other two areas of self-care named by NASP, social care and emotional health. The project includes information and worksheets to guide students in building their self-care practices as well as useful resources.