Are Empathy and Compassion Bad for the Professional Social Worker?
Abstract
Recent studies have shown that social workers and other professional
helpers who work with traumatized individuals run a risk of developing compassion
fatigue or secondary traumatic stress. Some researchers have hypothesized that
helpers do this as a result of feeling too much empathy or too much compassion for
their clients, thereby implying that empathy and compassion may be bad for the
professional social worker. This paper investigates these hypotheses. Based on a
review of current research about empathy and compassion it is argued that these
states are not the causes of compassion fatigue. Hence, it is argued that empathy and
compassion are not bad for the professional social worker in the sense that too much
of one or the other will lead to compassion fatigue. (Author Abstract)
Description
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Article
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Keywords
vicarious trauma, secondary traumatic stress, literature review
Citation
Nilsson, P. (2014). Are empathy and compassion bad for the professional social worker?. Advances in Social Work, 15(2), 294-305.