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: Again, examples of this abound and vary based on the type of work that we do. Secondary Traumatic Stress (STS) is a concept that was developed by trauma specialists Beth Stamm, Charles Figley and others in the early 1990s as they sought to understand why service providers seemed to be exhibiting symptoms similar to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) without having necessarily been exposed to direct trauma themselves. VT/STS can occur in professionals who work in high-stress and trauma-exposed fields (child abuse investigators, prosecutors, judges, therapists, health care professionals, animal shelter workers and many others) but it can also affect civilians who do not work in high-trauma fields but are deeply impacted by stories that they are exposed to (maybe graphic news accounts, a friend sharing details of a traumatic event they experienced, again, there are many examples of ways in which this may occur.) Direct trauma, in contrast, refers to a traumatic event that occurs directly to us. A paramedic who is called to a catastrophic car accident may have direct trauma as a result of what he/she sees at the crash site. 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.