Examination of Secondary Traumatic Stress in Psychological Counsellors Working with Earthquake Victims within the Scope of Psychosocial Support: Mixed-Methods Study

Abstract

This study aims to examine the dimensions of secondary traumatic stress experienced by psychological counselors providing psychosocial support services in the aftermath of an earthquake. The sample consisted of 51 psychological counselors (35 females, 16 males) with a mean age of 32.53 years. Data were collected using the Turkish version of the Secondary Traumatic Stress Scale, a personal information form, and a semi-structured interview form. For the analysis of secondary traumatic stress levels, Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient was employed for age and professional experience; the Mann–Whitney U test was utilized for gender, marital status, receipt of psychosocial support training, and parental status; and the Kruskal–Wallis test was applied to analyze the duration of psychosocial support provision. Qualitative data were analyzed using thematic analysis. The findings revealed weak negative correlations between age and both the arousal subdimension and total secondary traumatic stress levels, as well as between professional experience and the arousal subdimension. Psychological counselors without children exhibited significantly higher scores in the arousal subdimension and total secondary traumatic stress compared to those with children. Qualitative findings indicated that basic therapeutic approaches were prominent among the trainings received, with short-term psychological counseling models being the most prevalent. Furthermore, the cases with which counselors experienced the greatest difficulty were related to loss and grief. The majority of participants (82.4%) reported intrusive thoughts regarding their cases during non-working hours, and middle adulthood (35–59 years) was identified as the most challenging age group to work with. Future research with larger and more comprehensive samples is recommended to examine secondary traumatic stress in greater depth.

Keywords

• Psychological counseling
• psychological counselor
• psychosocial support
• secondary traumatic stress
• earthquake victim

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