Vicarious Traumatization

This chapter focuses on a major occupational hazard associated with working in the human service field. The work exposure to traumatic material through compassionate listening, case reviews, working during a pandemic, responding to a fatality, delivering a death notification, and attending to acts of hate and terrorism and so much more requires an understanding of how each event has the potential to affect mental health workers in profound ways. There is a cost of caring, and human service professionals owe it to themselves—as well as to those for whom they work, to colleagues, and to loved ones—to learn about vicarious trauma and to understand how to intervene as needed, while creating healthy strategies for self-care.