Compassion Fatigue and Burnout

Stress responses from day-to-day public safety work are common, and may also lead to symptoms that should be addressed early. Symptoms of ongoing stress that are ignored can become more chronic, ingrained reactions that may lead to potentially destructive and unhealthy coping habits, and more severe mental health symptoms. Two common outcomes related to day to day stress in public safety work are compassion fatigue and burnout.

Compassion Fatigue

Creating positive change in society is often at the forefront of why someone chooses a career in public safety. Over time, this mission can feel elusive, if not impossible. That is where “compassion fatigue” can begin to set in.

There are many factors that contribute to compassion fatigue in public safety professionals. This includes organizational issues, operational issues, and societal issues.

Signs of compassion fatigue

Compassion fatigue exists on a continuum and there are times when an individual is more resilient than others. Compassion fatigue comes to its peak when chronic conditions of perceived demands outweigh perceived resources.

Compassion fatigue is typically different than the phenomenon of burnout. In burnout, one no longer likes what they do and they do not want to do what they do, where with compassion fatigue, there is still the interest in doing what they do.

There are a number of signs of compassion fatigue, that if ignored, can develop into more permanent symptoms that result in higher levels of negative functional impact. Some of the common signs of compassion fatigue include the following:

• Exhaustion
• Absenteeism, missing work, taking excessive sick days
• Overeating
• No longer enjoying things that used to give you pleasure
• Problems with personal relationships
• Excessive use of and/or increase in use of drugs or alcohol
• Hypersensitivity or insensitivity
• Feeling burdened by the suffering of others
• Poor self-care
• Increased cynicism at work and changes in co-worker relationships
• Blaming others
• Complaints about your work or attitude
• Anger and irritability
• Isolation
• Lack of vision for the future
• Difficulty separating work life from personal life
• Feelings of hopelessness or powerlessness
• Difficulty concentrating
• Frequent complaining about your work or your life
• Denial

Awareness and management

According to the Compassion Fatigue Awareness Project, denial is one of the most detrimental symptoms because it prevents those who are experiencing compassion fatigue from accurately assessing how fatigued and stressed they actually are, which prevents them from seeking help. That is why awareness is so important.

You can build awareness of compassion fatigue within your own department by creating a culture that discusses this issue, and by helping people stay focused on the purpose of the work — knowing why they do what they do.

Teaching, learning, and practicing authentic, sustainable self-care daily can help manage the symptoms of compassion fatigue. By recognizing and addressing compassion fatigue, the likelihood of symptoms escalating into more concerning behaviors and potential mental health diagnoses decreases.

Burnout

The ICD-11 of the World Health Organization (WHO) describes occupational burnout as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed, with symptoms characterized by:

• feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion
• increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job
• and reduced professional efficacy

It is classified as a mismatch between the challenges of work and a person’s mental and physical resources

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