There are various substance abuse rehabilitation centers in the world that offer a variety treatment approaches from the more traditional one to more holistic or experimental services. In that, care can be customized to fit different clients. Substance addiction mostly changes an individual’s behavior, which in turn, affects how they undertake their personal and professional relationships. In substance abuse rehabilitation centers, clients are shaped with behavioral reformation in mind. Therefore, any such clients receive training on ways through which they could lead a healthy, safe lifestyle, for personal interests and societal interests as well. Substance abuse rehabilitation centers are preoccupied with helping their clients change or improve on their attitudes on drugs and get past the obvious denial of addiction. Substance abuse rehabilitation centers are the setting for v arious events and/or client interactions that cause human services professional within substance abuse rehabilitation centers to experience secondary traumatic stress disorder.
Secondary traumatic stress disorder can be defined as a form of emotional distress that results from a secondary party’s direct interactions with a victim of trauma. Human services professionals are prone to high rates of secondary traumatic stress disorder, and this is because the success of most rehabilitation centers is dependent on how well its workers are able to invest in their client's ordeal emotionally. Moreover, in most cases, clients, in the course of rehab, may espouse numerous requirements in terms of their needs for medical services. Some of these requirements are similar whilst others are dissimilar. As such, dealing with these co-occurring and additional needs can be stressful for human services professionals and may rob them of their energy and cause emotional stress. Factually also, despite the resourcefulness of a substance abuse rehabilitation centers, patients suffering addiction are prone to high rates of relapses; this causes frustrations to the human service professionals, especially the ones who were emotionally invested in building their therapeutic alliances.
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One of the characteristics that the human services professional might display when experiencing secondary traumatic stress disorder is burnout. This describes physical exhaustion as well as detachment, which may be seen in human services workers due to the extreme emotional demands of their jobs (Vahey et al. 2004). Burnout brings about poor performance at work alongside health issues. Additionally, burnout can be contagious, and this can be consequential for both the staff and the clients. The clients may experience low service satisfaction due to the lack or morale, absenteeism, low productivity from the human services workers.
Another characteristic of secondary traumatic stress disorder among human services professional is emotional exhaustion. It is commonly linked to stress-related illness such as an increase in the illness rate, substance abuse, anxiety, irritability and also fatigue. Emotional exhaustion can have major consequences for the human service staff in terms of their well-being and employment, seeing as they may no longer be viable in regard to the provision of medical care. Furthermore, emotional exhaustion may be frustrating on the part of clients; the replacement of affected medics interferes with the established order of doctor-patient interactions.
Turnover is also another characteristic of secondary traumatic stress disorder. Layne et al. (2004) postulate that substance abuse counseling is characteristically a frustrating and stressful job and it may influence treatment program employees to higher turnover rates. Turnover is not only a threat to the organization but also its clients, in that, it brings about instability for the organization and the clients since most of the substance abuse clients rely on a stable therapeutic relationship for their recovery. Additionally, with turnover, clients may suffer setbacks such as lack of trust in the system and may not be able to connect with the next human service worker. Conversely, the remaining staff may feel a lot of pressure due to an overload of case files, and this eventually leads to poor quality of patient care.
References
Layne, C. M., Hohenshil, T.H and Singh, K. (2004). The Relationship of Occupational Stress, Psychological Strain, and Coping Resources to Turnover Intentions of Rehabilitation Counselors. Rehabilitation Counseling Bulletin 48:19–30.
Vahey, D. C., L. H. Aiken, D. M. Sloane, S. P. Clarke, L., and Vargas, D. (2004). ‘‘Nurse Burnout and Patient Satisfaction.’’ Medical Care 42(Suppl. 2):57–66.
