‘Compassion Fatigue’ Hits People Who Care Too Much

Doctors, social workers and therapists are giving a new name to a syndrome they say is draining their ranks: “compassion fatigue.”

It strikes people who take on too heavy a load of other people’s burdens, leaving little time or energy for themselves. Victims become disillusioned and depressed, and often start to show cracks in their professional veneer.

“Everyone that I work with is affected by it. I’ve felt it in myself,” said social worker Lydia Parsons of the Mid-Maine Medical Center in Waterville. “I’ve had other people tell me about it, about me, before I was aware of it.”

Compassion fatigue is gaining recognition. A half-dozen presentations were devoted to it at a recent National Assns. of Social Workers conference. Dr. Edward Poliandro of Mt. Sinai Medical School in New York said people “were hanging from the rafters” to hear his workshop on stress management.

Some hospitals are offering support programs that feature stress management classes, longer staff meetings and even daily walks through the park.

As many as 20% of care-giving professionals suffer such burnout, said Dr. Lyle H. Miller, head of the Biobehavioral Institute in Boston.

Typical victims sound almost like TV stereotypes of social workers or doctors, working too much, sleeping too little, sacrificing their own lives and families for case after case. “It’s the best and the brightest and the most committed and the most energetic that burn out,” Miller said.

Parsons is a classic example. As director of the social work department at the Redington-Fairview Hospital in Skowhegan, Me., she was running on empty so often she couldn’t do anything very well. “I always felt guilty even going for lunch, because there was always someone waiting for me.”

Parsons quit that job and, after a break in which she worked part-time, joined Mid-Maine, where there are frequent staff meetings and peer-support sessions.

Thomas A. Welch, a former Catholic priest who left a Boston-area hospice program after a decade of helping the terminally ill deal with the prospect of death, said that he had been happy with his work but that it was too consuming to stay good at it for long.

“It’s very heavy emotional material. It’s not something that anyone should do for a very long time,” said Welch, who left both the church and the hospice in 1985 and now owns an Italian restaurant. “You get a sense that the whole world is dying after a while. I heard a friend say I was a downer, I should find a way to lighten up.”

Compassion fatigue went unrecognized for a long time because of the stigma attached to it, experts say.

“Very often people in any line of field would be looked down upon if they were to acknowledge they were really stressed out,” said Poliandro, who teaches stress management at the Mt. Sinai Medical School.

“There’s a double standard of being in the helping profession, that we should be able to see it in ourselves” before anxiety becomes a crisis, Parsons said.

When perfect employees ignore their stress they can become an administrator’s nightmare, Miller said. They can develop headaches, backaches, fatigue, depression and irritability. They might start to abuse drugs and alcohol, or begin not showing up for work, Poliandro said.

The best way to fight compassion fatigue?

Take a vacation, Poliandro and Miller agreed.

Administrators can help, however. The boss can force workers to take lunches away from their desks, outlaw working past 9 p.m. or forbid employees to work weekends, Poliandro said.

At Mt. Sinai, personnel can enlist in the “wellness” program, which offers, among other activities, daily walks through nearby Central Park. “It’s a rapid walk, to build up their health, but also they do it just to enjoy being outside and away from the pressures of the office,” Poliandro said.

Ultimately, professionals who help people have to teach themselves how to stave off the needs of their own patients, said Miller and Poliandro.

“Humans have a tremendous capacity to be resilient,” said Poliandro. “They just have to be able to replenish their energy.”