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

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.