Treating compassion fatigue.

Abstract

Reviews the book "Treating compassion fatigue," edited by C.R. Figley (see record 2002-17425-000. It is one of the more recent volumes in the distinguished Brunner-Routledge Psychosocial Stress series, and follows and builds upon the 1995 Compassion Fatigue: Coping with Secondary Traumatic Stress Disorder in Those Who Treat the Traumatized in expanding our knowledge of this phenomenon and its management. In Treating Compassion Fatigue, American, Australian, and Canadian mental health professionals explore a wide range of topics in two main sections. The first five chapters develop the conceptual complexity of compassion fatigue with both theoretical and research-driven contributions. The second five chapters discuss innovations in treatment and prevention. It is more a series of intellectual snapshots of a field in the process of becoming than a definitive statement about the important topics it addresses. clinicians. It outlines the problems that first responders, other helpers, administrators, and case managers are likely to encounter when they deal with the traumatized, and offers some tentative and partial solutions. It should be helpful in informing efforts to develop and build in interventions to "help the helpers" in agencies that deal with trauma in general as well as those that deal with disasters. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved)