What impact does working with trauma have on psychological therapists and what are the contributing factors?

Psychological therapists working with service users presenting with trauma can be negatively and positively affected by their work. Client factors, therapist factors and work factors are thought to contribute to therapists’ reactions however there are gaps in the research. To address this, the present study investigated the well-being of psychological therapists to test whether i) when working with complex Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), perceived personal resilience and the supervisory relationship were associated with compassion satisfaction, burnout and secondary traumatic stress, and ii) perceived personal resilience and the supervisory relationship moderated the relationship between working with complex PTSD and compassion satisfaction, burnout and secondary traumatic stress. Data from 298 psychological therapists was collected via an online questionnaire. Participants completed measures of resilience (Brief Resilience Scale), the supervisory relationship (safe base subscale of the Short-Supervisory Relationship Questionnaire), compassion satisfaction, burnout and secondary traumatic stress (Professional Quality of Life Scale). Demographic and background information was also collected. Multiple regression and analysis of variance were used to explore the associations between the variables and interaction effects. Results showed a trend towards working with complex PTSD being associated with higher burnout and a significant association between working with complex PTSD and secondary traumatic stress. Perceived personal resilience was significantly positively associated with compassion satisfaction and significantly negatively associated with burnout and secondary traumatic stress once complex PTSD was controlled for. The quality of the supervisory relationship was significantly positively associated with compassion satisfaction and significantly negatively associated with burnout once complex PTSD was controlled for. There was a trend towards the supervisory relationship being associated with lower levels of secondary traumatic stress. The supervisory relationship also significantly interacted with the relationship between working with complex PTSD and compassion satisfaction. There was a trend towards an interaction effect between complex PTSD and the supervisory relationship on secondary traumatic stress. These findings suggest that client factors, clinician factors and work factors may affect psychological therapists’ responses to their work.