Reducing burnout, vicarious trauma, and secondary traumatic stress through investigating purpose in life in social workers

Abstract

Summary Social workers fulfill vital roles, servicing clients from vulnerable populations and maintaining their welfare. As a result of frequent interaction with clients who have often experienced trauma, these workers are susceptible to experiencing burnout, secondary traumatic stress, and vicarious trauma. This study aimed to identify if purpose in life is a protective factor for adult/elder protective services (AEPS) and child protective services (CPS) workers. A comprehensive search of AEPS and CPS agencies resulted in more than 500 agencies throughout the United States. Three multiple regressions were run, with purpose in life as the independent variable, controlling for social workers’ years of experience, ethnicity, average of number of hours worked per week. Findings A sample of 292 participants ranging in age from 18 to 58 years of age, with a mean age of 42.03(12.34), participated in this study. Of the 292 social workers, 126 reported being CPS workers and 166 reported being AEPS workers. In all three linear regressions, higher purpose in life resulted in lower rates of vicarious trauma ( F(3, 263)=10.364, p<.001), secondary traumatic stress ( F(3, 263)=16.548, p<.001), and burnout ( F(3, 263)= 23.912, p<.001) when controlling for number of hours worked per week and years of experience. The amount of variance explained by these models ranged from 11 to 21%. Post hoc correlations between study variables were conducted, including the association between purpose in life and CS. Applications This study provides evidence necessary to warrant an intervention for protective services workers, specifically targeted toward increasing purpose in life.

Anti-black racism and community violence: an autoethnography of the experiences of a black male social worker in community settings

“…In reading some of the literature, it is apparent that supports for front-line workers who are exposed to violence indirectly are lacking (Argentero & Setti, 2011;Devilly, Wright & Varker, 2009). It is evident that social workers who directly support populations that experience trauma are susceptible to experiencing negative mental health impacts including vicarious trauma and professional burnout (Singer et al, 2020). This is in line with the themes that emerged from my analyses which includes implications for policy and mental health supports.…”

Vicariously Resilient or Traumatised Social Workers: Exploring Some Risk and Protective Factors

“…Previous research studied mainly different negative effects of indirect exposure to trauma, such as vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue or secondary traumatic stress (Baum, 2012;Hensel et al, 2015;Knight, 2019;Cummings et al, 2020;Singer et al, 2020).…”

“…The consequences of these positive or negative reactions to vicarious exposure to trauma are very different, almost opposed to each other, for the organisations, the workers, the service users and their relatives. In social workers, vicarious trauma positively correlated with avoidant coping, occupational stress and burnout (Badger et al, 2008;Cummings et al, 2020;Singer et al, 2020), and negatively with professional self-efficacy (Finklestein et al, 2015), purpose in life and compassion satisfaction (Singer et al, 2020). On the contrary, vicarious resilience positively correlated with active coping, personal resources, wellbeing and commitment (Engstrom et al, 2008;Killian et al, 2017), and negatively with stress and burnout.…”

“…Just like other helping professionals, social workers routinely deal with service users who disclose traumatic material (Pack, 2014;Baugerud et al, 2018;Merhav et al, 2018;Cummings et al, 2020;Molnar et al, 2020). In most cases, social workers are exposed to the same traumatising circumstances as their service users, which constitutes a shared traumatic reality (Baum, 2012;Singer et al, 2020;Vang et al, 2020), that is situations in which social workers help service users cope with traumas.…”

The Life Changer: Social Workers in Rehabilitation Facilities for Child in Conflict with the Law

“…Social workers perform important tasks, supporting vulnerable communities and ensuring their welfare. Because of frequent interactions with clients with trauma often these workers are vulnerable to experiencing burnout, secondary trauma, and vicarious trauma (Singer et al, 2020).…”