Secondary trauma and impairment in clinical social workers

Background: Secondary traumatic stress (STS), symptomatology resulting from indirect exposure to trauma, is one potential negative effect from engaging in clinical social work. Yet, little is known about the relationship between STS and workers' distress and impairment due to their work. Objective: The purpose of this paper was to explore STS in a national sample of clinical social workers (N = 539). Method and results: A structural equation model demonstrating good model fit indicated that STS mediated the association between trauma exposure at work and reports of significant distress and impairment (beta = .08, p < .01; 95 % CI = .03, .12). Likewise, STS mediated the association between working with children aged 13 and under and reports of significant distress and impairment (beta = .05, p < .05; 95 % CI = .02, .09). Results indicated that the model accounted for 25 % of the variance in significant distress and impairment (R-2 = .25, p < .001) and 5% of the variance in STS (R-2 = .05, p < .05). Conclusions: Implications for agencies working with child welfare are provided, including a discussion of addressing STS and significant distress and impairment at the individual and larger agency levels.