The cost of helping: Altruism, compassion fatigue, and compassion satisfaction of Filipino school counselors

• Main Author: Fernandez, Rochelle T.
• Format: text
• Published: Animo Repository 2020
• Subjects: Student counselors—Psychology; Altruism; Secondary traumatic stress; Compassion; Counseling
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/faculty_research/12289
• Institution: De La Salle University

School Counseling is a helping profession which include everyday exposure to other people’s problems and life crisis. Due to the nature of this career, counselors are becoming more prone to having compassion fatigue – a negative disposition factored from Burnout and Secondary Trauma. In this explanatory sequential mixed method study, the main goal was to explore how Altruism further relates to Compassion Fatigue and Compassion Satisfaction of Filipino school counselors. A survey was administered to 111 counselors from different High Schools within Metro Manila while in-depth interviews were conducted to seven select counselors. The study found out that the level of Altruism and Compassion Satisfaction has a significant direct relationship (r=.72) which imply that the level of altruism can affect how Filipino counselors feel positively about their profession. While Compassion Fatigue has weak inverse relationship with Altruism having moderate negative relationship with Burnout (r= -.62) and weak negative relationship with Secondary Trauma (r= -.26). The study have also identified core factors how Altruism relates to Compassion Satisfaction such as: (1) Helping as Motivation, (2) Helping brings Positive Emotions, (3) Selfless Acts give Life Meaning and Purpose, and (4) Believing in Greater Purpose. On the other hand, (1) Unmet Self-expectation, (2) Sacrifices leading to Straining, (3) Misconceived bias to Counselling, (4) Regretting Missed Opportunity to Help, (5) Feeling Inadequate, and (6) Work Overload are factors that links compassion fatigue to altruism.