Title: Defining Vicarious Trauma and Secondary Traumatic Stress - Tend Academy
Headings: Defining Vicarious Trauma and Secondary Traumatic Stress
Defining Vicarious Trauma and Secondary Traumatic Stress
What is Vicarious Trauma? What is Secondary Traumatic Stress?

Content: The person in the car may also experience a direct trauma experience. Individuals who hear details of the crash after the fact, or see it on the news may have indirect trauma exposure as a result. Whether someone will develop serious negative consequences as a result of VT/STS exposure depends on many factors which will we discuss below. When you look through the literature, you may see these terms used interchangeably, and sometimes they are referred to as “Compassion Fatigue” or “Burnout”. At TEND, we believe that Compassion Fatigue and Burnout are related phenomenon but do not necessarily always co-occur. We discuss this at greater length in another post. Click Here
At the end of the day, whether you call it STS or VT, what we are referring to is the impact of indirect exposure to difficult, disturbing and/or traumatic images and stories of the suffering of others – humans and sometimes animals and they way that it might impact us as individuals and as professionals. Over time, repeated exposure to difficult content can have a negative impact on our functioning and overall mental health, and it is important to develop a sense of our individual warning signs and develop tools to mitigate these negative effects. Read more about Vicarious Trauma/Secondary Trauma through the links Below
Tools to Reduce Vicarious Trauma and Secondary Trauma
Warning Signs, Are You Experiencing Vicarious Trauma? Extra Information About VT/ST