Vicarious Trauma

Experiencing stress and adversity can have direct consequences on mental health and impact every aspect of our lives. Indirect exposure to other people’s trauma, including through repeated exposure to written or visual details of traumatic events, can also have the same harmful effects.

This is referred to as Vicarious Trauma, and although it can occur in all sorts of occupations, some workers by the nature of their jobs are at increased risk. Emergency services workers, law enforcement officers, health workers, legal professionals, and claims staff in insurance agencies, for example, may be more prone to Vicarious Trauma; particularly when there are additional challenges at home or in the workplace.

Some people may appear outwardly affected, while in others, the signs may not be immediately obvious - but over time can negatively impact organisational culture and productivity.

Phoenix Australia’s Vicarious Trauma course has been developed by mental health clinical experts to help optimise organisational resilience and minimise the risk of vicarious trauma for your workforce.

Resilience, like physical strength, can be built and maintained with regular evidence-based practices - at home and in the workplace. Our Vicarious Trauma course introduces a framework to help guide you in the development of healthy individual and work practices that will build resilience and mitigate risk.

Our course takes a practical approach to teach you the organisational framework to guide the development of policies and procedures that promote best practice before, during, and after exposure to potentially distressing materials or events to help build workplace resilience, and the strategies to target wellbeing and encourage the development of self-care plans for your workforce.

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In this course you will learn about an organisational framework and the necessary strategies that you can implement to help optimise organisational resilience and minimise the risk of vicarious trauma for your workforce. The course will cover a range of topics including:

• trauma and its impacts
• risk factors and signs of vicarious trauma
• strategies for fostering resilience and mitigating the risk of vicarious trauma
• the ‘prepare, respond, recover’ framework
• and how to develop a self-care plan.

If your job involves working with people who have or are likely to experience trauma or you are routinely exposed to objectionable materials, our flexible, self-paced online course will provide you with a framework to guide the development of healthy individual and work practices that will help you build workplace resilience. This course is designed to be suitable for people with no, or minimal, mental health skills training and does not require a previous qualification.