History
An early use of the term was in a 1981 US document on immigration policy. In the early 1990s the news media in the United States used the term to describe the public's lack of patience, or perhaps simply the editors' lack of patience, with "the homeless problem," which had previously been presented as an anomaly or even a "crisis" which had only existed for a short time and could presumably be solved somehow. The term was also used in 1992 when Joinson used the term in a nursing magazine to describe nurses who deal with hospital emergencies. Compassion Fatigue has been studied by the field of traumatology, where it has been called the "cost of caring" for people facing emotional pain.
Compassion fatigue has also been called "secondary victimization" (Figley, 1982), "secondary traumatic stress" (Figley, 1983, 1985, 1989; Stamm, 1995; 1997), "vicarious traumatization" (McCann and Pearlman, 1989; Pearlman & Saakvitne, 1995), and "secondary survivor" (Remer and Elliott, 1988a; 1988b). Other related conditions are "rape-related family crisis" (Erickson, 1989; White & Rollins, 1981), and "proximity" effects on female partners of war veterans (Verbosky and Ryan, 1988).
Compassion Fatigue has also been called a form of burnout. The term was also used after the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, where commentators noted the apparent decrease in donations for other natural disasters. This also occurred during the 2005 hurricane season. Another contrasting example involves the 2003 earthquake in Bam, Iran.
In academic literature, the more technical term secondary traumatic stress disorder may be used. The term "compassion fatigue" is considered somewhat euphemistic. Compassion fatigue also carries sociological connotations, especially when used to analyse the behaviour of mass donations in response to the media response to disasters. One measure of compassion fatigue is in the ProQOL, or Professional Quality of Life Scale.
Read more about this topic: Compassion Fatigue
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