Compassionate fatigue (CF) is stress that results from exposure to a traumatized person. Cystic fibrosis has been described as the convergence of secondary traumatic stress (STS) and cumulative exhaustion (BO), a state of physical and mental exhaustion caused by decreased ability to cope with the everyday environment. Compassion fatigue is emotional and physical distress caused by treatment and help to patients who are in deep need of it. Caregivers of dependent people may also experience compassionate fatigue, which can become a cause of abusive behavior in caregiving professions. In fact, there are so many ways in which a person can change that compassion fatigue can appear differently from one person to another (making it much harder to recognize).
Compassionate fatigue has been studied in the field of traumatology, and Charles Figley played a fundamental role in characterizing it as the cost of care experienced by people who work in helping professions. Effective organizational strategies can support a culture of well-being that leads to a decrease in compassion fatigue and an increase in satisfaction with compassion. While some people with compassion fatigue spend less time at work, with sick days or leave, others spend more time at work, trying to keep up or taking their work home. Compassion is “I care about your suffering”, empathy is “I feel your suffering” and compassion is “I want to alleviate your suffering”. Journalism analysts argue that the media have caused widespread compassion fatigue in society by saturating newspapers and news programs with decontextualized images and stories of tragedy and suffering, which would be more accurately described as the fading of compassion.
The symptoms of compassion fatigue make it difficult to provide patient care and perform other functions. Compassion fatigue also has sociological connotations, especially when used to analyze behavior in response to media coverage of disasters. You end up abusing your abilities and reserves of compassion, so you don't have much to offer anymore, said Dr. Yazhini Srivathsal, a psychiatrist at Banner Behavioral Health Hospital in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Compassionate fatigue is a form of traumatic stress that results from repeated exposure to traumatized people or aversive information about traumatic events while working in a helping or protective profession. Sharron Spicer explains that when it comes to preventing compassion fatigue, good management and good leadership go hand in hand. In addition to keeping in touch with family and friends, psychologists could set up consultation or supervision groups via Zoom to connect with each other and prevent and treat signs of compassion fatigue. Intensive care personnel have the highest reported rates of exhaustion, a syndrome associated with the progression to compassion fatigue.
Compassion fatigue is the cost of caring for others or of your emotional pain, as a result of a desire to help alleviate the suffering of others.
