Click here to return to Proceedings 21
Working with Traumatized Clients: Secondary Traumatization
Kelly Mommaerts
,Extended Services Programs Inc.
6717 South Wood St.
Chicago. IL. 60630
(773) 436-1876
This presentation will explore the effects working with traumatized clients can have on all of us,
ranging from job burn-out to inter-personal problems to retraurnatization if we have experienced
trauma ourselves in the past, Secondary trauma, or vicarious traumatization, has come to light
over the past few years as more and more mental health professions began to recognize a specific
set of symptoms emerging after working for periods of time with clients who presented with
histories of abuse, and who were actively dealing with those issues in their lives, Many
professionals who were survivors themselves started to recognize that this work was having a
negative impact on their lives and started to realize that this was a phenomenon not unique to
themselves This presentation will explore how this syndrome presents, what signs to look for, and
how we as professionals can approach this Some other questions that will be presented to the
audience: Why is the mental health profession so unwilling/ unable to address this issue, how can
programmatic changes be incorporated into agency policy to take into consideration this issue,
and how can we address this issue in our individual lives and in our collective workplaces?