Examining of psychological resilience and secondary traumatic stress on social workers

The purpose of this study is to examine the psychological resilience effects to secondary traumatic stress of social workers and to reveal the relationship with different variables. The research is designed a mixed method. The study group of the study included 201 social workers. Participants' secondary traumatic stress symptoms are measured by The Validation of a Self- Report Measure of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Posttraumatic Diagnostic Scale, and psychological resilience is measured by Reliability and Validity Studies of Resilience Scale for Adults. Secondary traumatic stress of the study dependent variable, independent variable psychological resilience. Multiple regression analysis is used to determine the effect of psychological resilience on secondary traumatic stress, correlation and difference tests are applied to determine interaction with other variables. According to research results self-perception and social competence from the subscales of psychological resilience are found to predict secondary traumatic stress significantly. Other results are; there is a the psychological resilience differed in favor of women, secondary traumatic stress and psychological resilience are significantly differences from according to education level, psychosocial support need and social work areas. Medical and psychiatric social work and child welfare area may increase secondary traumatic stress, negative moderate correlation between age and avoidance dimension. There is a negative correlation between the duration of social work field and psychological resilience, there is a positive correlation between psychosocial difficulty and secondary traumatic stress, the interaction of issue areas is the most desperate on social workers, organizational support may reduce secondary traumatic stress, increase psychological resilience. In order to prevent or reduce the level of secondary traumatic stress on social workers, it is necessary to construct the applications for increasing the psychological resilience by considering the interactions of micro, mezzo and macro dimensions with ecological perspective. Keywords: Interaction, Psychological Resilience, Secondary Traumatic Stress, Social Worker