Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Conflict of interest: The authors declare no potential conflict of interest, and all authors confirm accuracy.
Ethics approval and consent to participate: The Ethics Committee of the University of Texas at Arlington approved this study The study is conformed with the Helsinki Declaration of , as revised in , concerning human and animal rights.
Informed consent: All participants to this study signed a written informed consent form for participating in this study. Availability of data and materials: All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher. Mental health counselors regularly use active listening skills to be present with each client; however, active listening may cause burnout due to high emotional labor, inadequate staffing, excessive workload, and many other issues, each of which contributes to career exits.
COVID exacerbated all of these factors, andβadding to already stressful conditionsβmost mental health professionals were forced to conduct therapy sessions via telehealth. For this study, twenty licensed mental health counselors at various stages of their careers were interviewed during the height of the pandemic to understand their experiences with the technology and other factors related to their workload during that time.
Results show how back-to-back, daily therapy sessions increased listening exhaustion levels and that counselors experienced both long-term and short-term listening exhaustion when utilizing telehealth due to lack of nonverbal cues and other related factors pertaining to online delivery.
