Compassion Fatigue

Sometimes after I read The New York Times, I need a breather: famine, sadistic terror, abject poverty and then page 2. And I just want to drink a first cup of coffee. TV is worse than the newspaper because the horror is seen and heard, consequently, short-circuiting the images I create by reading. This constant bombardment of ugly news is feeding a 1950’s dynamic known as “compassion fatigue,” or secondary traumatic stress (STS).

The dynamic of compassion fatigue was first associated with nurses and first responders who worked directly with trauma victims. The constant exposure to the suffering of others contributes to high levels of anxiety, anger and withdrawal by those who care much like the PTSD symptoms that affect combat veterans. My mother was the head nurse in a hospital that treated those who were severely wounded during WWII. It was common for her to hold a dying soldier during his last minutes, according to my father. She never recovered from living the trauma of others.

I am not suggesting that those of us who observe suffering at a distance are likely to suffer full-blown compassion fatigue, but I believe it clearly affects our psyche and manifests itself in the following ways:

• People avoid the news because it hurts to know in detail how much others suffer. Images of dead children in Syria who may have been victims of chemical weapons is this week’s case in point.
• Our government engages in hostile activities that average people sense they cannot stop. Again, the Pentagon’s declaration that it was ready to hit Syria with missiles is a threat that went over our heads. We hear it but cannot do anything about it.

The above conditions create a collective hopelessness, our country’s greatest enemy.