
Hey there PARA1000 students! My hobbit-like form showed up at a lecture for you on the 18th March, 2024. Here are the slides from that presentation.
On Monday 18th March I am giving (gave) a presentation to PARA1000 students on stress management, vicarious trauma and support services.
For those of you at that presentation, please find the slides here. I hope you got some value from it. Feedback always welcome.
I’d like to make mention of a couple of resources relevant to what was covered.
The first is the Vicarious Trauma Toolkit, produced by the Office for Victims of Crime in the US, from which I took many of the slides on vicarious trauma.
Vicarious trauma (VT) is an occupational challenge for victim services, emergency medical services, fire services, law enforcement, and other allied professionals. It is a stress response arising from the ‘cumulative impact of empathetic engagement with other people’s trauma‘.
The prevention and management of VT is the responsibility of both the individual (i.e. self-care) AND the organisation in which they work (e.g. training, peer support programs).
VT is not a core expertise topic of mine, but I have found it very interesting to learn more about. The Vicarious Trauma Toolkit has been essential in that process. If you are studying in a field in which exposure to other people’s trauma is a high likelihood, you might consider chatting to your tutors/lecturers about exploring this topic further, if it is not already part of your training. The toolkit contains resources that might be able to help in that process.
In looking for VT resources, I did become aware that there is another VT toolkit available from Worksafe Vic, which I might unpack for a future presentation.
Those interested in the topic might find this video a helpful introduction:
The second resource that I wanted to bring your attention to was something I found after the presentation, which I really wished I had discovered earlier.
It is a blog post from the eMHprac crew, who promote digital tools for mental health. In the blog post, Lauren from eMHprac outlines some of the digital tools available to frontline workers that related to PTSD.
This includes tools for workers and tools that workers can recommend to patients/clients/consumers. And it includes the National Emergency Worker Support Service