Stoesen, L (June 2007) “Recognizing Secondary Traumatic Stress,” NASW News.

 

 

Overview

Secondary Traumatic Stress (STS) is a very real, though sometimes overlooked, threat to social workers. Kim Shackelford worked in child welfare for years. Over time, she noticed that difficult, unresolved cases haunted her when the workday was over, leading to stress, nightmares, a negative outlook on the workplace, and intimacy issues within her own family.

 

Distinct from what sometimes passes under the title “burnout,” STS tends to be a “vicarious traumatization.” Some call it “compassion fatigue.” According to Stoesen, it results in changes in the psychological construct of the social worker and disrupts his or her beliefs. In Shackelford’s case, she was initially relieved simply to have a name for what was effecting her. Over time, she has sought to educate other social workers about this reality, co-authoring the book, Secondary Traumatic Stress and the Child Welfare Professional. But efforts to document the phenomenon are relatively recent.

 

In the 1980s, Charles Figley, now a professor at the Florida State University College of Social Work, started examining specific behavioral symptoms and comparing them with other types of traumatic stress. Brian Bride, a former student of Figley’s, helped clarify STS as a distinct thing, something separate from cases of pronounced counter-transference. In 2007 Bride published an article presenting evidence that social workers in many fields, not just child welfare, experience the symptoms of STS. In a survey of 282 social workers, over 70 percent of respondents had experienced at least one symptom of STS in the previous week.

 

According to Bride, “social workers engaged in direct practice are highly likely to be secondarily exposed to traumatic events through their work with traumatized populations. . .”

 

STS symptoms include feeling:

 

·        Helpless

 

·        Confused

 

·        Alone

 

·        Unsafe

 

·        Anxious

 

·        Withdrawn

 

·        Suspicious

 

·        Hopeless

 

Shackleford calls the following behaviors “red flags”:

 

·        Substance abuse

 

·        Dissociation

 

·        Irritability and Anger

 

·        Deterioration of personal/professional relationships

 

·        Risky behavior

 

·        Loss of empathy or concern for others

 

John Weaver, a social worker and founding partner of Eye of the Storm, Inc. (a consulting practice that specializes in disaster mental health, among other things), likens STS to “second-hand smoke of the mind.” Says Weaver, “You’re exposed to so much pain that vicarious traumatization occurs. If people don’t have good boundaries and support systems, if they don’t have good self-care, they become victims.”

 

 

For new graduates in social work attentive supervision is a necessary safeguard. Weaver and Shackelford agree that agencies and workers need to get in the habit, early and often, of voicing their work-related feelings in a supportive community of other social work professionals. Shackelford’s own students working in child welfare, for example, are instructed to pay attention to emerging symptoms they may have. But more awareness is needed. The tendency to chalk things up to ‘burnout’ allows a lot of experienced social workers to retire early, with insufficient thought given to the cause or treatment of potential STS symptoms. 

 

 

Questions for Reflection and Discussion:

 

1.      Do you or social workers you know have experience with these kinds of stress?

 

2.      Are social workers prone to burn out?

 

3.      Are young social workers adequately mentored and supported as they begin their work?

 

4.      What are some ways in which child welfare advocates and counselors can be supported in their difficult work?

 

 

Implications:

When experiences of stress are given a medical label (such as “STS”) our perspective of them changes. Whether or not STS is indeed a classifiable and quantifiable phenomenon is less important than the fact that social-workers work and live under incredible stress. The frequency with which they face terrible situations is as sobering as it is admirable. In the very least, the condition examined in this article reminds us that social workers, and not just the people they care for, need supportive and caring communities.

 

Christopher S. Yates cCYS