Burnout in mental healthcare professionals has been well-documented as an occupational hazard, marked with symptoms similar to clinical depression and anxiety that causes not only harm to the counselor, but poses a risk to client care. Most evidence-based research promotes counselor self-care as best practice and emphasizes the need for counselor resilience; however, most strategies offered indicate activities that may simply distract the counselor temporarily or rely on physical abilities (such as sleep and exercise) when cognitions and emotional processing may be needed for long-term healing and resilience. Dispositional gratitude and gratitude practices have been shown to increase the recognition of resources available, prosocial behaviors, other authentic positive emotions, and a host of physical benefits in general samples, clinical samples, trauma survivors, and healthcare workers. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationships between burnout, resilience, dispositional gratitude, and gratitude practices in licensed clinical counselors. In addition, this study examined the differences between a multitude of work-specific characteristics, such as weekly hours of direct client care, average acuity level of clients, presenting concerns, payer sources, setting, supervision, work support and other characteristics that have been linked to burnout in literature. A total of 498 licensed counselors completed this online survey which included the Counselor Burnout Inventory (CBI), the 10-item Connor-Davidson Resiliency Scale (CD-RISC), the Gratitude Questionnaire (GQ-6), the Gratitude Practice Questionnaire (GPQ), as well as a work-specific characteristics questionnaire and demographics form. An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted for the newly constructed GPQ. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to assess the relationships between burnout, resilience, dispositional gratitude and gratitude practices with results confirming the strong inverse relationship between burnout and resilience, the positive correlation between dispositional gratitude and resilience, and the covarying relationship between dispositional gratitude and gratitude practices. The hypothesis that gratitude practices would be inversely correlated with burnout was not supported as the relationship was positive. A series of analyses of variances (ANOVAs) were used to determine differences between work-specific characteristics and each variable in the study. The findings of this study highlight the need for further research regarding gratitude practice in licensed counselors and support the role that gratitude practices may play in boosting resilience by way of dispositional gratitude and preventing burnout from increasing in severity. The findings of this study do strongly support the need for licensed counselors to have a strong clinical referral network, a supportive work environment and home life, and ways to recognize the good that remains in the world. Implications for clinical practice, counselor self-care, counselor education, and clinical supervision are discussed.
