Burnout and Compassion Fatigue: Health and Human Services

• By School of Health Professions
• March 20, 2025
• Health

Do you feel overly stressed out? Exhausted due to consistent stress and overwhelm? Do you work in a health or human services profession and feel like you’re constantly carrying the weight of those you are serving? 

We sat down with Dr. Elizabeth Chavez-Palacios, LPC-S, CRC, CI,CCMC,CGP,C-DBT, to discuss burnout and compassion fatigue - what they are, how they differ, how you can recognize when you have either, how you can prevent them and most importantly, help yourself - specifically if you are in a health or human services profession. 

She is an instructor for the Clinical Rehabilitation Counseling program within the TTUHSC Department of Clinical Counseling & Mental Health and the School of Health Professions. She has been a licensed professional counselor in Texas since 2007, and she’s been in academia since 2009, with an emphasis on clinical supervision, stress and burnout prevention in mental health professionals.

Stress vs. Burnout

According to Dr. Chavez-Palacios, burnout happens when you are overly stressed out. It is a form of exhaustion due to consistent stress, consistently feeling overwhelmed and swamped. It happens when you have too much going on physically, mentally and emotionally. And more often than not, burnout is associated with one's job, although burnout can happen in any aspect of our life. 

An SHRM 2024 Research Series found that 44 percent of 1,405 surveyed U.S. employees feel burned out at work, 45 percent feel “emotionally drained” from their work, and 51 percent feel “used up” at the end of the workday.

While burnout and stress go hand in hand, she says it’s important to note that they are in fact not the same thing. Dr. Chavez-Palacios says stress comes as a result of too much mental and physical pressure and too many demands on your energy reserves and your time. While burnout is feeling as if you don't have enough to give anymore.

Compassion Fatigue

Compassion fatigue is a different struggle altogether. Compassion fatigue is when you’ve exhausted any level of compassion that you can afford to give. If you’re experiencing compassion fatigue, Dr. Chavez-Palacios says there is a high likelihood that you’re operating in a health or human services profession.

“We're constantly giving, and there's nothing really that is given in return,” she says. 

Speaking from her own experience working in the clinical mental health field, she says that when you’re working with individuals who are survivors of trauma or adverse childhood experiences, it's very difficult not to allow it to affect you on an emotional level. 

“And so we do have to kind of keep our emotional guard up,” she says. “It gets tiresome to have to keep up that brave front. It's that vicarious or secondary trauma that we get very tired from.”

She says that wouldn’t trade her work, specifically working in this field, for anything, but encourages intentional and consistent self-care. Without incorporating some aspect of self-care into your routine, burnout can rear its ugly head. 

Self-Care and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

From a mental health provider's perspective, Dr. Chavez-Palacios says it’s important to start with the basics in terms of self-care. She references Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, a five-tier theory in psychology recognizing basic human needs. The below needs are referenced from Simply Psychology from the bottom to top.

• Physiological - air, water, food, shelter, sleep, clothing, reproduction
• Safety - personal security, employment, resources, health, property
• Love and belonging - friendship, intimacy, family, sense of connection
• Esteem - respect, self-esteem, status, recognition, strength, freedom
• Self-actualization - desire to become the most that one can be

She also recommends consistent exercise and eating well as forms of self-care. But self-care can look different for everyone and doesn’t have to be extravagant. As a single parent to three children, Dr. Chavez-Palacios enjoys catching a movie on her own once a week. For someone else, it may include something spiritual like prayer or meditation.

One resource she encourages that can greatly improve your mental health through burnout and compassion fatigue is sharing with a support system - whether that is over dinner with friends and family or finding other like-minded professionals that might be experiencing the same thing. She says that finding a supportive community to help you through times of burnout or compassion fatigue is one of the best forms of self-care you can practice.