”Vems barn vill du att jag väljer bort?” En kvalitativ studie i en kommun i Västra Götaland om fem skolkuratorers upplevelse av stress i arbetet

摘要

The purpose of this study was to examine how school counselors in a specific municipalityviewed their work situation, if they experienced stress and how they would handle that stress.Five school counselors out of eight in the specific municipality participated in qualitativeinterviews where they could describe their feelings and thoughts. Their experiences wasexamined and analyzed with the theories of coping and empowerment. The results showedthat there were unhealthy levels of stress in the profession amongst the five counselors. It alsoshowed that the uttermost reason for the experienced unhealthy stress was the feeling of notbeing able to give as much time and help to the pupils as they want and need. The reason forthis was that an increasing number of pupils were, and are, experiencing unhappiness and arein need of seeing the school counselor. Empowerment was used in the analyze of how tohandle the work related stress through taking power over the individuals own situation and asa tool for counter-power. The participants in this study had diverse answers to copingstrategies with only one in common, physical activity. This was practiced by three out of fivecounselors. For the individual school counselor it can be of great help to review his or herwork situation and use various coping strategies to gain control over the unhealthy stress.