The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 45, No. 3 - 46

R. Jason Lynch

agement, resource identification and referral,
needs assessment, and student advising and
support (Cawthon & Schreiber, 2012; Council
for the Advancement of Standards in Higher
Education, 2015). Table 1 highlights similarities in common duties for both social workers
and residential life practitioners.

POTENTIAL IMPACT OF TRAUMA
SUPPORT WORK
As noted, the severity and number of students
experiencing traumatic life events has increased (Gallagher, 2014; U.S. Department of
Education, 2016), and residential life practitioners may be tasked with providing some level
of support and intervention for these students
(Cawthon & Schreiber, 2012). Yet, this type
of support work has potentially severe consequences for live-in residential life staff. For
instance, feeling fatigued when coming home
from work is not uncommon, yet for some,
aspects of their work such as trauma support
can lead to negative, sometimes severe, outcomes beyond exhaustion. Champions of
trauma stewardship, Lipsky and Burk (2009)
highlight this distinction stating,
There is a difference between feeling tired
because you put in a hard day's work
and feeling fatigued in every cell of your
being. Most of us have experienced a long
day's work and the reward of hard-earned
exhaustion . . . That is one kind of tired. The
kind of tired that results from having a trauma
exposure response is a bone-tired, soul-tired,
heart-tired, kind of exhaustion . . . (p.110).
Although not every professional will experience this type of exhaustion, scholars and practitioners have identified a number of negative

outcomes related to trauma support including
burnout, secondary trauma, and compassion
fatigue.

Burnout
The American Institute of Stress (n.d.) defines
burnout as " . . . a cumulative process marked
by emotional exhaustion and withdrawal associated with increased workload and institutional stress, not trauma-related" (p.1.). Newell
and MacNeil (2010) also described burnout
using three domains: emotional exhaustion,
depersonalization, and reduced sense of personal accomplishment. Several factors have
been linked to burnout within college student
affairs including gender (Howard-Hamilton,
Johnson, & Kicklighter, 1998); poor supervision (Marshal, Gardner, Hughes, & Lowery,
2016); and low levels of job satisfaction (Buchanan, 2012). Burnout has also been linked to
issues of turnover and attrition within the field
of higher education (Mullen, Malone, Denney,
& Dietz, 2018).

Secondary Traumatic Stress
Also called vicarious traumatization, secondary traumatic stress can be described as " . . . the
stress resulting from helping or wanting to
help a traumatized or suffering person" (Figley,
1999, p. 10; McCann & Pearlman, 1990).
Currently, diagnostic criteria exists within
the 5th Edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders which links occupational exposure to traumatized individuals
to symptoms of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder
(PTSD) including avoidant behavior, intrusive thoughts, negative alternation to mood or
cognition, and changes in arousal and reactivity (American Psychiatric Association, 2013).
Lipsky and Burk (2009) also offered a set of

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The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 45, No. 3

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