The Cost of Caring

Teaching staff do a lot more than teach, and a big part of the activity additional to teaching is listening to other peoples’ problems and perhaps helping to sort them out.

That doesn’t come without fallout, the person attempting to help is obviously involved and is therefore in line for some of the psychological negatives, which are often born silently.

It is called Secondary Traumatic Stress (what happens to you when you see or hear about someone else’s trauma). It is a significant problem within schools with 39% of education staff frequently affected by the trauma of others, while a further 38% experiencing it sometimes.

Educators are becoming social workers as they are having to support more and more students with trauma. Because they cannot find services to help students (often due to a lack of funding and resources); 16% of educators said they are often or very often depressed and 51% said they experience some degree of depression due to the silent cost educators are dealing with.

Dr Adam Fraser and Deakin University have completed Australia’s first study exploring the impact of second-hand trauma on staff in schools. Almost 2300 school staff participated in the study and 1068 people documented comments of second-hand trauma. Moreover, 107 educators shared their experiences in a detailed interview with researcher, Dr John Molineux from Deakin University.

The study shows Secondary Traumatic Stress and Burnout are the biggest predictors of rumination about work at home, mental health risk and likelihood of leaving the role.
● 61.6% feel worn out due to work often or very often.
● 5.6 out of 10 educators scored in the moderate to very high Mental health risk category (vs 3.6 out of 10 in Australian adults).
● Almost 65% of staff in schools said they were preoccupied about one or more students that they help.
● 45% of staff said they sometimes or often feel as though they are experiencing the trauma of students they have helped.

For educators, the impact of secondary trauma from the students they teach has a more devastating impact on them than their own individual trauma.

Younger educators (up to 29 years of age) are most affected showing worse results than older educators (60 years of age and over) in:
● Burnout 8% worse
● Ability to cope with trauma 7% worse
● Mental health risk 20% higher risk
● Likely turnover 11% higher risk.

There were two other main trends identified. In almost all measures in this study:
1 Rural and remote schools scored higher or worse than regional and metro schools.
2 Staff within Special Education and in particular Special Education units within mainstream schools scored higher or worse than Mainstream schools.

Many educators said a significant source of stress is that they cannot access services to get help for students living in abusive or neglectful environments. This leaves them with no other choice than having to send students back into unsafe home environments.

Image by Vika Glitter