The Cost of Justice: A Desk Manual on Vicarious Trauma

Trauma Definitions

PTSD - Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

PTSD is the psychological effect of direct exposure to extreme and traumatic stressors such as criminal victimization, natural disaster, war and terrorism.

STS - Secondary Traumatic Stress

STS refers to those who come into continued close contact with trauma survivors and their stories, including their oral and visual evidence. Secondary Traumatic Stress is viewed as an occupational hazard of providing direct services to a traumatized population. It is the natural, consequent behaviour and emotion resulting from knowledge about a traumatizing event experienced by another person and it is the stress resulting from helping or wanting to help a traumatized or suffering person.

The negative effects of secondary exposure to a traumatic event appear to be nearly identical to those with primary exposure, with the difference that exposure to a traumatizing event experienced by one person can become a traumatizing event for a second person. The symptoms include intrusive imagery, avoidant responses, physiological arousal, distressing emotions and functional impairment.

In the result, Secondary Traumatic Stress is defined as a syndrome of symptoms nearly identical to those of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, including symptoms of intrusion, avoidance and arousal.

Vicarious Traumatization

Vicarious traumatization for lawyers working in the criminal justice and family law sectors would include three essential elements:

• an emotional and psychological disruption suffered by the professional;
• the disruption would be caused as a consequence of fulfilling professional obligations to manage the traumatic material, to achieve or pursue some helping objective for another; and,
• the professional obligations would involve engagement with a person (a client, a witness, or a victim) who has experienced a legally significant traumatic event.

Compassion Fatigue

Compassion fatigue is another term often applied to this field; however, it is increasingly used to describe exhaustion and desensitization to violent and traumatic events portrayed, in particular, by the media.

Burnout

...[B]urnout ... was originally defined as a complex of psychological responses to the particular stresses of constant interaction with other persons in need . . . .

...Burnout also can be understood in terms of learning theory, and has been identified as a progressive loss of idealism or the professional's unrealistically high expectations concerning professional work given the clinical, social, or organizational environment, and usually are not amenable to adjustment...

Burnout also has been closely associated with clinical work involving difficult or complex patient populations ... Burnout has been examined in relation to work in special clinic areas such as corrections where treaters come in frequent close contact with both victims and perpetrators ... and encounter continual exposure to central themes of violence and abuse ... Blair and Ramones, "Understanding Vicarious Traumatization"; Journal of Psychosocial Nursing; 1996: 34(11) : 24-30.