International Journal of Trauma Research and Practice - Anger Study_0

From the Cutting Edge: Trends In Trauma PracticeSecondary Trauma in Forensic Settings: Effects on Court Personnel, Jurists, Jurors, and CorrectionalOfficersLee Norton, PhD, MSW, LCSW, George Woods, M.D., Lauren Brown, MSSW, LCSWOverview of Secondary TraumaThere is no single authoritative definition of secondary trauma; however, there is general consensusamong traumatologists that indirect exposure (i.e. listening to stories about trauma or caring for a personsuffering from trauma) to overwhelming events can cause the same symptoms of helplessness and horroras seen in those who directly experience trauma. Symptoms of traumatic stress have been observed and describedfor centuries and are the foundation of modern theories of secondary stress. The Iliad and Odysseynarrate the persistent horrors of war (Shay, 1994; 2002). Neurologists studied the phenomenon of hysteriain the 19th century (Goetz, 1987). Physicians at the front lines described shell shock in WWI (Myers,1940), and war neurosis in WWII (Kardiner, 1947). In the 1970’s, the Vietnam war disgorged thousandsof abjectly incapacitated veterans who were plagued by severe symptoms that were not well known or understood.Social scientists responded to this post-war condition, and also to the similar symptoms seen invictims of rape and domestic violence. In 1980, the DSMIII included the first diagnosis of posttraumaticstress disorder (PTSD). This edition emphasized the cause of traumatic stress symptoms—events that wereexperienced with “intense fear, terror, and/or helplessness,” that were “outside the range of usual humanexperience,” and “would be markedly distressing to almost anyone” (APA, 1980).Research into post-traumatic conditions following the Vietnam war did not subside, and interdisciplinaryinterest in the subject remained high. Informed by a growing body of data, the authors of the DSMIIIRshifted their attention from cause to effect, and revised the diagnostic criteria of PTSD to include three categoriesof symptoms: intrusion, avoidance, and arousal (APA, 1987). By the 1990’s, enough data had beengenerated to allow researchers and clinicians to move from description to prescription regarding traumaticstress. Moreover, clinicians, researchers and other practitioners began to notice that not only individualswho sustained direct trauma developed symptoms; helpers, familymembers, and others also became symptomatic (McCann &Pearlman, 1990).Trauma researcher Charles Figley pursued this theme. In his text,“Compassion Fatigue: Coping with Secondary Traumatic StressDisorder in Those who Treat the Traumatized”, he describes howhealth care providers could become “traumatized by concern”(Figley, 1995, p. 5). Recognition of the secondary effects of traumawas a defining advancement in the field of traumatology, andlead to the hypothesis that a much broader population of individualscould be at risk for secondary traumatic stress than at firstwas thought. Increased knowledge about the infectiousness ofanxiety and trauma supported the notion that numerous professionalsoutside the mental health field suffered from the secondarysymptoms of traumatic stress. Figley and his progeny edifiedthe communicable effect of trauma from patient to doctor, victimto caretaker, disenfranchised to advocate. Cumulative researchIJTRP | Summer 201428