Significance of Social Support Among Black Mental Health Counselors: The Role of Counselor Educators and Supervisors in Combating Race-Related Stress

La Toya L Patterson

doi:10.33790/jmhsb1100140

Abstract

In general, mental health counselors face unique challenges in their job roles because of the population that they work with. However, Black Americans who worked in predominately White workspaces perceived race-based discrimination to be a real issue. Perseverative cognition related to work can cause an increase in the individual’s need to recovery because it maintains work-related stressors that deplete the individual’s resources further. The repetitive thoughts can lead to anticipatory cognition or stress, which makes the individual hyperaware or vigilant due to thinking they may experience racial discrimination or a racial encounter. Social support has been used to buffer the adverse effects that are caused by racial encounters. Social support has shown to have an influence on mental health by buffering the effects of stressors. Participants were provided a survey that include three questionnaires to complete. The results showed that the overall models for the two analyses were significant. However, the moderators for the analyses were not significant.

Highlights

Researchers discuss how race-related stress can have long-lasting effects; the current literature does not focus on the anticipatory stress or response that African Americans experience after a race-based incident
Many of the participants were self-identified as Black/African American (92.4%) and 6 (7.6%) participants self-identified as biracial
This suggests that constant worrying about a racial encounter or anticipating a racial encounter can have an impact on work-related burnout for Black mental health counselors and that social support can work in a buffering fashion

Summary

Introduction

Researchers discuss how race-related stress can have long-lasting effects; the current literature does not focus on the anticipatory stress or response that African Americans experience after a race-based incident. Anticipatory stress is described as the experience before experiencing the stressor. When African Americans are repeat victims of a race-based incident, they will develop an anticipatory racism reaction, which is a defense mechanism for African Americans [1]. African Americans that are working in predominately White workspaces consider racism to be a real issue. For African Americans in the workplace, structural racism plays a major role in race-based incidents. The race of the individual can shape the occupational opportunities through structural racism, beginning with policies and “de facto practices woven into labor market institutions” [4]. Given there is an abundance of literature that examines how occupational stress and burnout are a problem

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