What is Secondary Traumatic Stress?

This video describes the concept of secondary traumatic stress. It’s important to understand that secondary traumatic stress is way that somebody can develop symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or meet the full criteria of posttraumatic stress disorder. There are a lot of other terms that mean something similar or even the same as secondary traumatic stress. For example, compassion fatigue is generally thought of as an interchangeable term. We also see vicarious trauma, which is similar but it’s not really exactly the same thing. There’s more of a cognitive component to vicarious trauma. Sometimes we hear the term burnout, but burnout applies to a phenomenon that affects individuals from every field, not just individuals who hear details of traumatic experiences. Somebody can burnout in part due to secondary trauma, but it’s a separate construct. Secondary traumatic stress by itself is not a mental health disorder. The mental health disorder associated with it would be posttraumatic stress disord