Promoting Ethical Behavior by Cultivating a Culture of Self-Care During Graduate Training: A Call to Action

Self-care practices maintain strong professional functioning and decrease risk of burnout and exhaustion. Limited research has examined how these practices are learned and practiced by graduate students. The current study examined self-care-related policies and practices in psychology graduate education, focusing on clinical psychology doctoral programs associated with the Council of University Directors of Clinical Psychology. For all member programs, departmental and/or clinical training area handbook(s) were evaluated for a mention of terms related to self-care. Of 177 programs sampled, handbooks were available online for 136 (76.8%) of them; of these, 15 (11.0%) had an available general psychology department handbook that referenced self-care and 44 (32.4%) had an available clinical psychology training area handbook with such a reference. A simple reference to psychotherapy or mental health services for impaired students was the most common self-care theme observed. Given these findings, and the importance of self-care practices to the professional psychologist, it is suggested that graduate programs adopt clearly articulated and readily accessible self-care statements as well as institutionalized self-care practices that are encouraged and/or supported by faculty and administration. A call to action urges psychology training programs to consider initiating a shift from cultures of self-care that are reactive in nature to ones that instead are proactive and preventive, with a focus on wellness.