Secondary Traumatization and Personal Growth among Mental Health Officers who Treat Patients with Non-Suicidal Self-Injury and Suicidal Behavior: The Role of Cognitive and Personal Characteristics

Mental health officers often encounter soldiers in states of acute distress that may be accompanied by threatened and attempted self-injury and suicide. The literature shows that therapists working with such patients tend to exhibit stress, burnout, difficulty sleeping, lack of appetite, and doubts about their qualification or professional competence. Their willingness to treat these patients can even be affected. Therapists who encounter distress in their patients may suffer from secondary traumatization, but at the same time, they may report experiencing personal growth. This study is based on the current growth model (Tedeschi et al., 2018), and aims at examining the associations between exposure to soldiers reporting self-injury and suicide ideation, on one hand, and secondary traumatization and personal growth, on the other, among mental health officers. The study examines the contribution of cognitive variables (event centrality, challenging of core beliefs, and ruminations), and expands the personal growth model by examining a personality variable that has not been examined before (self-compassion). One hundred and thirty mental health officers participated in the study by completing self-report questionnaires (a demographic questionnaire, the Secondary Traumatic Stress Scale – STSS, the Post-traumatic Growth Inventory-Short Form – PGI, the Centrality of Event Scale – CES, the Core Beliefs Inventory – CBI, the Event Related Rumination Inventory – ERRI, and the short Self-compassion Scale – SCN). The centrality of the event, challenge to core beliefs, and the two types of ruminations (intrusive and deliberate) were found to be positively related with secondary traumatization and growth. We also found a negative association between self-compassion and secondary traumatization. However, the mental health officers’ seniority and their degree of exposure to self-injury and suicide were not associated with secondary traumatization and growth. In addition, no association was found between self-compassion and growth. The study shows that higher exposure of mental health officers to thoughts and behaviors of self-injury and suicide in encounters with patients, is associated with a higher level of both intrusive ruminations and deliberate ruminations, and those in turn are associated with higher secondary traumatization.

This study is valuable because it offers a broader understanding of the matter and could contribute to designing dedicated training programs for therapists dealing with suicide and self-injury. This study may also shed light on cognitive skills that can be improved as part of the individual supervision provided to supervisors in order to reduce stress and increase growth.