Secondary Trauma Research
Thank you to everyone who supported, shared, filled in the survey and offered their time in interviews for our groundbreaking research into Secondary Trauma in Educators. As researchers, numbers and data are important to us but we were not prepared for the huge response we got. We had 2285 responses to the survey, 1068 respondents left stories about the secondary trauma they had experienced, and 107 educators completed the interviews (an additional 200 offered to). We would also like to thank everyone who attended the interim results webinar on 21st November, we had over 500 people sign up. It is clear that people are very much interested in this silent cost.
So, if you missed the webinar; here are the key findings:
The tough stuff
Exposure to secondary trauma (the trauma you experience when you find out about someone else’s trauma) is very high in educators. Many of them commented that it was something they faced on a daily basis. When someone is exposed to secondary trauma, they experience Secondary Traumatic Stress (STS). Our research showed it is a significant issue for educators across Australia with 38% of people saying they experience it often or very often and a further 38% reporting that they experience it sometimes. STS (tied with burnout) was the biggest predictor of rumination (excessive worry), mental health risk and likelihood of leaving the profession for people in education.
An interesting finding was while many educators are exposed to high levels of trauma through their work, the data suggests that how an educator processes the secondary trauma as measured by STS is more important than how much secondary trauma they are exposed to. We also found that individual or personal history of trauma is only weakly correlated, which indicates that the secondary trauma they are experiencing at work has a more significant impact on them than the trauma they have experienced in their own life. Just think about that for a moment; it’s a hugely impactful finding.
Burnout is extraordinarily high in educators with 61.4% reporting often or very often feeling overwhelmed with their workload and 61.6% reporting they feel worn out because of their workload. Rumination is also high with 53% replaying negative work events in their minds even after leaving work often or very often. While it has been reported for many years that burnout in educators is high, our study shows that burnout also plays a key role in STS.
In terms of Mental Health risk, when compared to the Australian population, more educators are in the moderate and high mental health risk category and significantly less educators are in the low mental health risk.
Likelihood of leaving the role is very concerning with over 37% of educators saying they are likely to leave the role due to STS. Given the current teacher shortage, this is showing that STS is a real threat to the current education model.
While these results are not ones to celebrate and they paint a grim picture, they are incredibly important findings and paint the reality of what educators face, as the role changes and evolves over time. What we are witnessing is, the symptoms of societal disorder are being manifested in student behaviour at school.
There was some good news too
Compassion Satisfaction relates to how much pleasure you derive from helping other people in need. 93.1% of educators answered often or very often to the question “I get satisfaction from being able to help students”. Compassion Satisfaction has a protective effect on rumination, mental health risk and likelihood of leaving the profession. Compassion Satisfaction is also negatively and strongly correlated with burnout. This just shows what we already know – educators are incredibly dedicated, and this job is a true vocation for them.
What strategies work?
Two techniques that will have a positive impact on STS, rumination and mental health risk and likelihood of leaving the role are coping and recovery. If you’ve done The Flourish Movement or Flourish for Schools programs, you’ll know that day 1 is all about recovery. In particular, detachment at the end of the day, which is being able to separate work and home, has the greatest impact. This obviously relates to The Third Space research.
Support also showed a strong ability to reduce the chance of the negative outcomes listed above. Many educators turn to their colleagues for support and rated this support positively. However, it was the impact of good support from their direct supervisor that had the greatest positive impact.
What’s the role of training?
Training was an area that needs work. The results show that from 13-36% of respondents report not have any training in the area of trauma. 55% of those that had training in trauma informed practice reported it helped to a large or very large extent, but only 36.3% of educators rated ‘Self-care for educators’ as helpful to a large or very large extent. Development of trauma training for Educators is an area of need.
How do systems help?
We do believe that there needs to be system changes, both within the department and in external agencies that can support educators many a traumatised child. A shift in funding needs to go to the provision of support – some of which may need to be in the support services for families and students in distress, rather than relying on educators. For example, employing family welfare staff in support of local schools.
At the very least, systems need to recognise that this is a serious problem and evolve their approach to match that. Schools are no longer just about literacy and numeracy; the educators have been forced to become the social workers of society. They spend an enormous amount of time managing traumatised students and families. This means we can no longer measure their effectiveness through NAPLAN or HSC scores.
For more detail and findings from the study, please read our interim report ‘The Silent Cost: Impact and Management of Secondary Trauma in Educators’. We hope you find this report insightful.
We have to thank our sponsors on this research.
