Wellness of Counseling Students: Practicing What We Preach

A study of wellness among 263 graduate students in counseling revealed that counseling students experienced greater wellness than the general population; however, significant within-group variability existed. Doctoral students reported significantly greater wellness in most areas measured by the Wellness Evaluation of Lifestyle (J. E. Myers, T. J. Sweeney, & J. M. Witmer, 1996) as compared with entry-level students. Moderate effect resulted for Sense of Control, Intellectual Stimulation, Work, and Total Wellness. Students who were not Caucasian reported greater wellness in Cultural Identity than did Caucasian counseling students. Article: As with prior drafts, the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (2001) standards for counselor preparation specify requirements for promoting the personal development of counseling students. Students are encouraged to participate "in seminars, workshops, or other activities that contribute to personal and professional growth" (Section II.D) and to understand factors such as how "personal characteristics, orientations, and skills" affect helping relationships (Section II.J.5). Furthermore, the standards encourage counselor educators to select applicants to counseling programs based on an assessment of "each applicant's openness to self-examination and personal and professional development" (Section VI.5). Once admitted, "program faculty conduct a developmental, systematic assessment of each student's progress throughout the program, including consideration of the student's academic performance, professional development, and personal development" (Section VI.B). Despite these mandates, there is little available information concerning (a) how to select counselor trainees based on positive mental health (Markert & Monke, 1990), (b) effective strategies for promoting personal development of counseling students (Mahoney, 1991; Witmer, 1997; Witmer & Young, 1996), or (c) strategies for screening and reviewing student personal growth (Bradley & Post, 1991). In the 1960s and 1970s, developing human potential was a frequent theme in the counseling literature (e.g., Maslow, 1970, 1971; Rogers, 1961). Since that time, information on the personal growth component of counselor training programs has been intermittent at best (Witmer, 1997), despite evidence suggesting a need to focus on the mental health and wellness of counselors as providers of intimate human services (Mahoney, 1991). For example, in a study of 180 beginning counselor trainees, White and Franzoni (1990) found higher levels of psychological disturbance in the counselor trainees than were found in the general population; data were obtained from measures of deviance, locus of control, and coping skills. Bradley and Post (1991) studied criteria for admission to counselor training and concluded that most existing criteria focus on predictors of academic success only. Yet, as Markert and Monke (1990) demonstrated, such criteria predict neither counselor competency nor mental health. A review of the PsycINFO (American Psychological Association, 2002) electronic database resulted in 42 citations that addressed "counseling and wellness" and 11 related to "counselors and wellness." The majority of these articles were either theoretical or applied, and few reported the results of empirical studies. A notable exception was a study reported by Evans (1997) in which the wellness of African American counselors was examined; she noted that these counselors used both spiritual and emotional wellness activities more than occupational or physical wellness activities and that gender was related to spiritual wellness, whereas position (i.e., work setting) was related to both emotional and physical wellness. No studies reporting the wellness of counselors, in general, or counselor trainees, specifically, were found. However, Archer, Probert, and Gage (1987) did study the attitudes of undergraduate students toward wellness and concluded, "although students recognize the importance of wellness, they may be reluctant to admit their need for information or assistance" (p. 317). Both Evans (1997) and Archer et al. (1987) based their research on Hettler's (1984) Hexagonal Model of Wellness, which includes physical, emotional, spiritual, occupational, social, and intellectual aspects of wellness. Similar to other wellness models, Hettler's work is based on the physical sciences and medicine rather than on psychological and counseling theory. The Wheel of Wellness model developed by Sweeney and Witmer (1991) and later revised (Myers, Sweeney, & Witmer, 2000) to incorporate aspects of gender and cultural identity, is based on Adlerian theory and incorporates multidisciplinary research on aspects of holistic wellness. Hermon and Hazier (1999) applied this model in a study of 155 undergraduate students and found significant relationships between the dimensions of wellness in the Wheel and both short-term state and long-term trait aspects of psychological well-being. Hensley and Smith (in press) used the Wheel model to develop an intervention program to promote student development in undergraduate student success programs. To date, this model has not been applied to graduate students, particularly in counseling. Our study was undertaken to examine the wellness of counseling students. The primary research questions were What are the overall levels of wellness of counseling students? How does the wellness of counseling students compare with the wellness of people in general? Are there within-group differences in wellness of counseling students based on gender, graduate status (i.e., entry-level or doctoral), or ethnicity? Finally, what are the implications of the findings for counselor training, particularly the personal development of counselor trainees? Method Instrumentation The methodology for this study involved the analysis of data from an existing database that was developed over a 5-year period, using individuals' responses to the Wellness Evaluation of Lifestyle (WEL), a 120-item paperand-pencil instrument that measures the characteristics of wellness depicted in the Wheel of Wellness model (Myers et al., 2000). These characteristics include the following five life tasks: spirituality, self-direction, work and leisure, friendship, and love. Self-direction is further divided into 12 subtasks: sense of worth, sense of control, realistic beliefs, emotional awareness and coping, problem solving and creativity, sense of humor, nutrition, exercise, self-care, stress management, gender identity, and cultural identity. Items on the WEL are statements (e.g., "I am an active person") to which participants reply using a 4-point Likert-type scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree). Subscale scores are computed in a two-step process. First, the numerical values of the items' responses are added, and then a mean item response is computed and multiplied by 25. This linear transformation places the scales on a similar metric with scores ranging from 25 to 100. A composite score for self-direction is computed by summing the scores from the 12 individual self-direction subscales. In a similar way, a total wellness score is computed by summing scores for all items on the WEL. Test-retest coefficients for the 19 WEL scales ranged from .90 to .96 for a 2-week interval for 99 undergraduates, and alpha coefficients ranged from .61 to .91 for a group of 3,043 adults. The adult norm group included 46% women, 80% Caucasians, and 20% other ethnic groups. The age range was 17-99 years (mean age, 31 years; SD = 16). Approximately half (46.8%) of the participants had at least a bachelor's degree. Hattie, Myers, and Sweeney (in press) reported exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses in support of the 19 discrete scales of the WEL. Participants Among the 3,043 adults in the WEL database, 263 were graduate students in counseling programs when they completed the instrument. These students took the WEL primarily during their 1st year of training in programs in North Carolina, Ohio, Nevada, Louisiana, and Florida. Selected demographic descriptors of the sample are shown in Table 1. As shown in the table, approximately 70% of the students were women, which reflected the recent demographic breakdown of students in counselor training programs (Hollis, 2000). Men were 27.8% of the sample, and 1.9% of the sample did not indicate gender. The ethnicity of the student sample was 74.9% Caucasian, 5.7% African American, 12.9% other minority, and 6.5% unknown or missing. Just over half (i.e., 52.4%) of the participants were under 30 years old. The mean age of entry-level students was 33.03 (SD = 13.08), and the mean age of doctoral students was 34.41 (SD = 6.87). The mean age of the entire student sample was 33.3 (SD = 12.37). TABLE 1 Selected Demographic Descriptors of Counseling Graduate Students by Gender Demographic Men Women Total Characteristic n % n % n %