ABSTRACT
This chapter consists of a discussion of job stress and burnout as they relate to rehabilitation agencies, individual staff members. The history of burnout in the helping professions is normally thought of beginning with the publications by Herbert Freudenberger. The phenomenon of burnout is not without its critics both in popular and scholarly periodicals. Various definitions of burnout were proffered with the first wave of publications. Defensive coping, the professional engages in a variety of self-defensive strategies such as detachment from clients, together with cynicism and rigidity. The nature of stress is seen as the imbalance that occurs when the individual's resources available to deal with a demand are insufficient. A central facet to the transactional model of stress is the individual's appraisal of situations/events and the resources available. An attempt is made to relate these stressors to the transactional context.
