A groundbreaking new study has revealed that secondary traumatic stress is a critical and largely unrecognised factor driving teacher shortages, burnout and mental health risk for educators at rates exceeding those of psychologists, paramedics, and mental health nurses.
Secondary traumatic stress (STS), also known as compassion fatigue, is the emotional duress that results when an individual hears about the firsthand trauma experiences of another.
The final report from a 2024 nationwide study involving 2,285 educators, collecting 1,068 stories of trauma and 107 detailed interviews with educators, has uncovered alarming evidence that STS, which has been overlooked in education so far, is a critical threat to teacher mental health, wellbeing and retention.
The report, ‘The Silent Cost: Impact and Management of Secondary Trauma in Educators’ co-authored by Dr Adam Fraser and Deakin University, was released on 13 May.
Key findings of the report include:
1. Educators report STS levels:
- 21 per cent higher than psychologists
- 23 per cent higher than mental health nurses
- 34 per cent higher than paramedics
Despite the intensity of this impact, most educators receive no formal support or training to manage STS, unlike their health and emergency service counterparts.
2. Secondary trauma (supporting children with trauma) and the resulting stress that comes with it is contributing to the intention of educators to leave the profession.
- 37.3 per cent of educators indicated they are likely or extremely likely to leave the profession due to STS, with a further 18 per cent unsure if they will stay.
- 16 per cent of educators said they are significantly depressed and 50 per cent said they experience some degree of depression due to the silent struggle educators are dealing with.
- Burnout remains widespread, with 70.8 per cent of educators scoring in the moderate to high range, and 61.4 per cent frequently reporting feelings of overwhelm.
3. The vast majority of training is not having a positive impact on educators’ STS, compassion satisfaction and burnout levels.
- Highly effective training that helps educators understand, teach and manage children with trauma, such as Trauma Informed Practice (TIP), does not improve the educators’ STS.
- TIP training that was rated as not effective or low effect increased STS by 12.5 per cent. This demonstrates the increased need for support and training for educators around managing STS, as given to professions such as social workers and psychologists.
4. Self-care training shows greatest ability to mitigate educators’ STS.
- Highly effective self-care training demonstrated the most positive impact for educators. It showed improvement in STS by 7.6 per cent, compassion satisfaction by 9.77 per cent and burnout by 13.73 per cent.
- Not effective/ low effectiveness self-care training has a detrimental effect as it increases STS by 5.8 per cent, reduces compassion satisfaction by 4.4 per cent and increases burnout by an enormous 30.6 per cent.
A crisis no one saw coming
“This issue has crept in unnoticed. When we started this research, no one in education was talking about STS – it was all about burnout and general wellbeing,” said Dr Adam Fraser, one of the project’s lead researchers and initiator of this research project.
“The toll of exposure to student trauma, combined with increased expectations and limited support, is pushing educators to breaking point.”
Dr Fraser said STS is different from burnout – it stems from indirect exposure to trauma, and when combined with burnout, it leads to compassion fatigue, a debilitating condition that strips educators of their capacity to have empathy for others and puts them in a state of emotional disconnection where they find it difficult to recognise signs of abuse or distress in others.
“This is not burnout alone. This is deeper. It’s the cost of witnessing the impact of student trauma, day after day, with no buffer, no outlet, and no support,” Dr Fraser said.
Solutions require system-level change
The report warns, this is not a problem educators can fix on their own. It calls for urgent system-level intervention from governments and education departments.
“One of the biggest challenges educators face is trying to get support from government departments. People in the study said it was difficult to access services that could help trauma-sed students,” Dr Fraser said.
Recommended actions needed are:
- Formal recognition of STS as a professional risk for educators
- Introduction of STS as an area in all undergraduate teaching degrees
- Provision of highly effective evidence based self-care training to mitigate STS and burnout
- Provision of trauma informed practice training at a school level for better student outcomes
- Access to professional supervision for educators
- Increased funding and resourcing to child and health care services and systems – mental heath care services, department of child services to meet the levels of mandatory reporting
- Better coordination between schools and community services in regions
- Timely and effective responses from mandatory reporting systems
- Supervisor support for school principals as they provide supervisor support to their teachers
The study also offers hope. The study also identified a group of educators with high exposure but low STS levels. These individuals consistently use multiple strategies (including up to eight methods across coping, recovery, and support categories) and maintain a strong sense of agency over how they manage the emotional impact of the role.
“Their success underscores the importance of training, systems, and leadership in mitigating the effects of secondary trauma,” Dr Fraser said.
