Understanding Disparities in Access to Self-Care Among Psychology Graduate Students//Kylie Steinhilber

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There is growing emphasis on self-care in psychology graduate programs, especially those which focus on clinical work, in which emotional burden is heavy. Subsequently, research has explored the benefits of self-care for students who are attempting to balance the demands of their academic responsibilities, clinical caseload and research endeavors, all the while attempting to take care of their physical and psychosocial health.

Recent research has shown self-care to have personal and academic benefits (Zahniser, Rupert, & Dorociak, 2017). This research shows that self-care can reduce the negative impact of stress on psychology graduate students. Moreover, graduate programs play a large role in students’ self-care such students engage in more self-care when their programs encourage it (Zahniser et al., 2017). Still, students find that there are barriers to engaging in self-care, myself included.

It is a given and widely accepted fact that students in clinical graduate programs are hard pressed for time. However, we must also acknowledge the disparities among students in their ability to engage in self-care. Rather, I should frame this as “access” to self-care. These disparities are not a result of differential skill among students to engage in self-care, rather these disparities arise as a result of social determinants, such as SES or financial burden, family or living environment, or ethnic mismatch between a student and a program.

Through talking with fellow graduate students, I have become increasingly aware of the various pressures placed on individuals within programs and how this impacts their time, space, and comfort to engage self-care. For example, if a student is financially supporting themselves in a program that does not provide tuition remission, that student might have to work two alternative jobs in addition to their regular academic, research and clinical schedule. Thus, there may be limited time for self-care. If that same student also lives with four roommates to cut costs on rent, that student might also not have the space to engage in private self-care. Additionally, if that student is from an ethnic minority background in a program of mostly White students, that student may not feel the social support, comfort, or inclusion to engage in forms of self-care such as building professional support systems that have found to be important for academic progress and personal wellbeing (Zahniser et al., 2017). Yet, programs often do not consider, or even know, the extent of these burdens on each student when they preach self-care.

Programs may need to consider these factors that I call “social barriers to access to self-care”. In exploring the intersectionality of these factors, we can understand self-care from a more feminist lens. Moreover, we can emphasize the feminist nature inherent in self-care. Authors have already identified this, such as Sharanya Sekaram, a feminist writer, researcher, and activist. She writes:

“[Self-care] means moving away from what you are ‘supposed’ to do to what we need to do and how we make this decision for ourselves. This is a deeply feminist idea – rooted in the ideas of autonomy and choice. For women especially, pigeonholed by patriarchy into the roles of nurturers and caretakers, the practice becomes a political and feminist act.” (Sekaram, 2018)

And yet, instead of framing it this way, programs encourage self-care as yet another “thing we are supposed to do” as students, without realizing the unrealistic pressure this place on students, especially those who do not have access to the time, space, or comfort to do so. 

I suggest that programs include bottom-up approaches to self-care. For example, creating inclusive environments in which students can define what self-care means to them, set realistic goals for themselves, and track their personal growth on these dimensions. This puts the power back into students’ hands. Furthermore, due to the time and money constraints on students, self-care, in my opinion, should be added into the curriculum. Lastly, program faculty should explicitly examine the ways in which students’ social burdens intersect and impact not only their ability to engage with self-care but also their performance in the program. By doing so, I would hope that evaluations become less biased. Moreover, evaluations could then become more reflective of the additional “work” that students engage in without academic or financial compensation. 

Written by Kylie Steinhilber  

References:

Zahniser, E., Rupert, P. A., & Dorociak, K. E. (2017). Self-care in clinical psychology graduate training. Training and Education in Professional Psychology, 11(4), 283–289. doi: 10.1037/tep0000172

Sekaram, S. (2018, October 18). The politics of self-care and feminism. [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://www.genderit.org/feminist-talk/politics-self-care-and-feminism