Advancing a Model of Secondary Trauma: Consequences for Victim Service Providers

Abstract

A burgeoning body of scholarship is attempting to understand, normalize, and ameliorate the emotional strain of victim service provision. The literature, however, has yet to fully theorize the hazardous process of empathetic engagement with victims. As a result, concepts, mechanisms, and outcomes are often conflated, making it difficult to understand the etiological path of this occupational risk. The goal of this article is to attend to this gap by accomplishing three objectives. The first is to engage with the perspective of symbolic interaction to theoretically ground a conceptual model of secondary trauma. The second objective is to propose a model of secondary trauma that acknowledges its inherently interactional, interpretive, and, thus, vicariously transmissible nature. The third objective is to begin the work of empirically supporting this model with data from a sample of victim service providers ( n = 94) collected using in-depth interviews, focus groups, ethnographic participant observation, and community-based participatory research. Our findings suggest that victim service provision, in the form of empathetic engagement, can blur the boundary between self and other, and lead to a sense of damage in the self that manifests in unreliable self-agency, untrustworthy coherence of other, desensitized self-affectivity, and fractured self-history. This work has significant implications. We illustrate an important paradox by showing how victim service provision can be helpful to victims but harmful to providers. We also offer a pathway for reducing this harm. By specifying mechanisms of damage, the model can be used to inform policies and practices supportive of victim service providers' health and well-being.

An Exploration of New Zealand Crown Prosecutors' Experiences of Working with Potentially Traumatic Material and Emotions in the Courtroom

“…The terms vicarious trauma, secondary traumatic stress, burnout and compassion fatigue have been used interchangeably in the literature to describe the impact of bearing witness to someone else's trauma through interacting with PTM. While each term is conceptually distinct, there is often confusion in the application and scope of the terms due to overlap in symptomology and inconsistent use in the literature (Branson, 2019;Ellis & Knight, 2018;Léonard et al, 2020). As a result, concepts, mechanisms and outcomes described by these terms are often conflated, making it difficult to understand the etiological pathway of the occupational risks of working with PTM (Ellis & Knight, 2018).…”

“…While each term is conceptually distinct, there is often confusion in the application and scope of the terms due to overlap in symptomology and inconsistent use in the literature (Branson, 2019;Ellis & Knight, 2018;Léonard et al, 2020). As a result, concepts, mechanisms and outcomes described by these terms are often conflated, making it difficult to understand the etiological pathway of the occupational risks of working with PTM (Ellis & Knight, 2018). Thus it is important to define each of these before conducting a review of the literature.…”

Compassion Fatigue Among the Intimate Partner Violence and Sexual Assault Workforce: Enhancing Organizational Practice

“…Staff working in IPV-and SA-focused agencies face stressors related to the nature of their work, including ongoing exposure to traumatic material. Service providers report difficulties associated with witnessing the immediate and long-term impacts of violence, feeling powerless to ensure protection and safety of clients, and experiencing reductions in their own sense of safety and security (Ellis & Knight, 2021;Iliffe & Steed, 2000;Kulkarni et al, 2013). Service providers may also experience increased stress when program goals do not align with survivor needs (Goodmark, 2011;Wachter et al, 2020).…”

The Cost of Bearing Witness to the Environmental Crisis: Vicarious Traumatization and Dealing with Secondary Traumatic Stress among Environmental Researchers

“…There are important insights to be learned here from literature on secondary traumatic stress, where it has been noted that many of the people who work with trauma have had traumas themselves. This can provide more understanding and motivation, but it can also be dangerous in such cases when witnessing activates previous traumas in the mind of the observer (Ellis and Knight 2018;Salston and Figley 2003).…”

“…While there is a general understanding that trauma is related to any event exceeding the individual's ability to meet its demands (Herman 1992), scholars such as Ellis and Knight (2018, 3) point out that 'despite the term's popularity, there is little consensus as to its precise meaning'. Traumas are often separated into primary and secondary trauma (Ellis and Knight 2018), and primary trauma can be further separated into type 1 trauma (resulting from a sudden event) and type 2 trauma (chronic exposure to potentially traumatizing events) (Terr 1991).…”