Secondary Traumatic Stress: Disaster Mental Health

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Introduction
Secondary traumatic stress is defined by Dr. Charles Figley, director of the Traumatology Institute and chair in the Disaster Mental Health and Associate Dean at Tulane University. He says “We Define secondary traumatic stress as the natural, consequent behaviors and emotions resulting from knowledge about a traumatizing event experienced by... other[s]. It is stress resulting from helping or wanting to help a traumatized or suffering person” (Stamm, 1999, p. 10) While secondary traumatic stress (STS) can affect people in a variety of different careers and positions it is most apparent in the lives of medical professionals due to the emotional and physical trauma that they witness people going through on a daily basis.
The secondary …show more content…
“STSD is a syndrome of symptoms nearly identical to PTSD except that exposure to a traumatizing event experienced by one person becomes a traumatizing event for the second person. Thus, the STSD symptoms are directly connected to the person experiencing primary traumatic stress” (stamm, 1999 p. 130). Some of the major overlapping complications include difficulty falling/staying asleep, and the development of depression and anxiety.
One major sign/symptom or secondary traumatic stress is difficulty falling and staying asleep, says the American Counseling Association (American Counseling Association, n.d.). When someone is lacking the correct amount of sleep, it has been linked to the development of serious mental health issues. According to Dr. Lawrence J. Epstein (2008) of Harvard Medical School in an interview, “People who have problems with sleep are at an increased risk for developing emotional disorders [such as] depression and anxiety. There is a very strong link.” Epstein's findings are confirmed in research by UC Berkeley. They found that when someone is sleep deprived, the amygdala, or the part of the brain that deals with the processing of emotions is overworked. Consequently, the prefrontal cortex loses its ability to make logical decisions which turn off the brain's natural fight-or-flight …show more content…
Compassion fatigue is a big part of second hand traumatic stress, this describes the exhaustion of compassion, meaning that so much benevolence and empathy is being used during the work day, that when a parent working as an MD arrives home, they have little to no compassion left for their children. The National Child Trauma Stress Network, an organization funded by the US Department of Health and Human Services collaborates with doctors and researchers to provide accurate information regarding children and parents who are exposed to high levels of stress. They found that people who are suffering from compassion fatigue are more likely to be hypervigilant (The National Child Traumatic Stress Network, p. 2), meaning that they are on guard and have little patience for minor annoyances that a child is more than likely to
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