Social Workers in Israel: Compassion, Fatigue, and Spillover into Married Life

We examine resources that might moderate the effect of compassion fatigue (consisting of secondary traumatization, burnout, and compassion satisfaction) on the quality of social workers' married lives in Israel. Drawing on the conservation of resources theory, we examined the moderating role of traumatic life events (contextual resources) and of self-differentiation and professional self-esteem (personality and professional resources) on compassion fatigue and on its spillover into marital quality. Two hundred two (n = 202) social workers completed 7 self-report questionnaires. Results indicated that high compassion satisfaction and professional self-esteem contributed to the participants' marital quality. Self-differentiation moderated the effect of secondary traumatization, and professional self-esteem moderated the effect of burnout on their marital quality. Whereas personal traumatic life events mitigated the effect of secondary traumatization on marital quality, family traumatic life events intensified the effect of spillover on marital quality. Since social workers deal with highly stressed populations in difficult life situations, programs are recommended to enhance social workers' professional self-esteem so as to reduce their vulnerability to secondary traumatization and burnout. Also recommended are workshops to sharpen their work-family boundaries. Future research to examine the effectiveness of different types of programs in enhancing compassion satisfaction is urged.