The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between stress coping styles and burnout of play therapists to investigate the mediating effects of countertransference management abilities on the relationships between stress coping styles a...
The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between stress coping styles and burnout of play therapists to investigate the mediating effects of countertransference management abilities on the relationships between stress coping styles and burnout.
The participants of this study were 233 play therapists working at the children’s clinic, welfare center, child psychiatry, university, youth clinic in Seoul and Gyeonggi-do.
They were assessed with Stress Coping Styles Scale undertaken factor analysis by Kim, Jeong-Hui and Lee, Jang-Ho(1985) and revised and supplemented by Kim Jeong-Hui(1987), which was based on The Ways of Coping Checklist of Folkman and Lazarus(1985). To evaluate the ability to manage countertransference, CFI(Countertransference Factors Inventory) developed by Van Wagoner et al.(1991) and translated by Chang, Se-Mi(1999) was used. To evaluate burnout of play therapists, Child Counselors’ Burnout Scale developed by Park, Hee-Hyun and Kim, Kwang Yong(2005) was used.
The results were as follows:
First, level of burnout was found to be lower when play therapist used active coping primarily, while they experienced burnout at a high level when they utilized passive coping.
Second, active coping had significant effects on all sub-factors of countertransference management abilities. Also, passive coping had significant effects on self-insight, self-integration, empathy ability, and anxiety management among countertransference management abilities.
Third, all sub-factors of countertransference management abilities had significant effects on the total score of burnout.
Finally, between active coping and burnout, it was verified that 4 sub-factors of countertransference management abilities, self-integration, empathy ability, anxiety management, and conceptualizing skills, worked as partial mediators. Also, it was verified that 3 sub-factors of countertransference management abilities, self-integration, empathy ability, and anxiety management, worked as partial mediators between passive coping and burnout.