Psychology 3316F/G Chapter Notes - Chapter 10: Emotional Contagion, Interpersonal Perception, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
22 May 2019
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Week 10 Reading — Secondary Traumatization and Compassion Fatigue
•compassion fatigue (CF), secondary traumatic stress (STS), or vicarious traumatization (VT)
refer to the phenomenon of therapists feeling the same emotions are patients secondarily (i.e.
the consequences of studying or helping people who have experienced trauma)"
•primary trauma involves first experiencing a stress injury"
•the human survival response is the natural healing process in which the person thinks
through life experiences, try to make sense of them, and figure out what to do next which can
facilitate resiliency "
•adversarial growth it growth from encountering adversity and is associated with lower levels
of stress"
•compassion is a deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relive it"
•stress is a sense for demand or action"
•compassion stress is the demand to be compassionate and effective in helping ad is
experienced when feeling the demand to help regardless of whether the need for compassion
is real or imagined, possible or impossible"
•fatigue is the mental weariness from exertion that’s associated with attending to the
emotional and physical pain of others"
•CF is the exhaustion resulting from compassion stress, the demands of being empathic and
helpful to those whoa re suffering so it’s a form of PTSD"
•CF is different from STS because it’s an outcome or consequence of STS"
•STS is the demand to be compassionate and reward of appreciation affects worker
behaviour due to the tendency to take home the worries of the victims of trauma that they’re
experiencing secondarily"
•symptoms of CF are fatigue and erosion or loss of compassion"
•CF and STS have similar symptoms to PTSD"
•emotional contagion is as affective process in which an individual observing another person
experiences emotional responses parallel to that person’s actual or anticipated emotions,
intergenerational effects of trauma, and the need for family detoxification from war-related
traumatic stress"
•proximity effect of wives of soldiers or people related to rape victims is similar to STS"
•DSM-5 highlighted STS as a pathway to PTSD"
•enduring secondary stress for an extended period of time (e.g. first responders) lowers CF
resilience which can lead to substance abuse of relationship conflicts"
•family members can exhibit reactions similar to those of helloing professionals who work with
trauma survivors"
•Lee (1995) found the correlation between CF and caseload dissatisfaction, that MFT
experience more CF than medical students but less that trauma survivors, and a strong
relationship between CF and various negative cognitive schemas"
•Barnes (1997) found that many parents are traumatized due to the emotional cost of caring
for physically injured children"
•spouses of people who work in trauma can experience STS"
•firefighters experience PTSD similar to war veterans (18% vs. 20%), police officers
experience it worse, and journalists report a 77% prevalence (other studies find 4-6%)"
•symptoms of trauma exposure to reach teachers and students learning about it"
•VT is a transformation in the therapist’s inner experience resulting from empathies
engagement with clients’ trauma material and vulnerability to the emotional and spiritual
effects of trauma which are cumulative, permanent, and evident in the therapist’s
professional and personal life"
•VT is related to the cognitive schemas of therapists pertaining to social and interpersonal
perception of morale"
•some see VT as an outcome or product of trauma exposure while others think of it as a
process resulting from ongoing exposure to victims of trauma"
