Empathy and

Trauma in Social
Work
Brianna Leith
 OVERVIEW
The research reviewed empathy in social work and the relationship of
empathy altruism hypothesis in social work, and explored compassion
fatigue in clinicians which led to vicarious resilience.

● Helping behaviors and professionals

● Empathy altruism hypothesis
● Compassion fatigue
● Vicarious resilience
● Future implications

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 EMPATHY ALTRUISM HYPOTHESIS

● A person solely helps another person out of genuine concern

○ (Batson et al., 1991)
● Different forms of helping: gaining vs concern
● Different empathic responses: physical, emotional, verbal
○ (Stellar et al., 2020)
● Outcomes of helping responses: client success, social worker fatigue
● Relationships between social worker and client

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 COMPASSION FATIGUE

● Negative effects of empathy

○ Compassion fatigue, burnout, stress, secondary trauma, and decline
in health (Butler et al., 2017)
○ Self and other merging (Batson, 1997)
● Reducing compassion fatigue
○ Training courses, education, CE-CERT (Miller & Sprang, 2017)
○ Self care
○ Individual wants and motivation

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 VICARIOUS RESILIENCE

● What is Resilience?
○ the ability to overcome struggles and traumatic events
● Learning from the client in social work
○ Client’s strengths and positive effects (Engstrom et al., 2008)
● Client influencing in other helping professions
● Provide examples in professional training courses and education

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IMPLICATIONS
 EDUCATION AND TRAINING

● CE-CERT Model
○ Components for Enhancing Clinician Engagement and Reducing
Trauma (Miller & Sprang, 2017)
● Examples
○ Sharing experiences
○ Include in discussion, presentations, training courses
● Conferences
○ Connection to social work and social psychology

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 ADDING TO ACADEMIC LITERATURE

● Combining current literature

○ Well rounded education and understanding of research
● Continuously adding and filling the gaps
○ Need of further exploration to combat negative effects of
empathy in different ways

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ANY QUESTIONS?
THANKS!

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REFERENCES
Batson, C. D., Batson, J. G., Slingsby, J. K., Harrell, K. L., Peekna, H. M., & Todd, R. M. (1991). Empathic joy and the
empathy-altruism hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61(3), 413-426.
doi:10.1037/0022-3514.61.3.413

Batson, C. D. (1997). Self–other merging and the empathy–altruism hypothesis: Reply to Neuberg et al (1997). Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 73(3), 517–522. doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.73.3.517

Butler, L. D., Carello, J., & Maguin, E. (2017). Trauma, stress, and self-care in clinical training: Predictors of burnout, decline
in health status, secondary traumatic stress symptoms, and compassion satisfaction. Psychological Trauma: Theory,
Research, Practice, and Policy, 9(4), 416-424. doi:10.1037/tra0000187

Engstrom, D., Hernandez, P., & Gangsei, D. (2008). Vicarious resilience: A qualitative investigation into its description.
Traumatology, 14(3), 13–21. doi.org/10.1177/1534765608319323

Miller, B., & Sprang, G. (2017). A components-based practice and supervision model for reducing compassion fatigue by
affecting clinician experience. Traumatology, 23(2), 153–164. doi.org/10.1037/trm0000058

Stellar, J. E., Anderson, C. L., & Gatchpazian, A. (2020). Profiles in empathy: Different empathic responses to emotional and
physical suffering. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 149(7), 1398–1416.
doi.org/10.1037/xge0000718.supp

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