Examination of secondary traumatic stress levels of psychological counselors

Today, individuals are faced with many shocking and traumatic events. These traumatic events that individuals are exposed to in daily life also affect themselves and the people around them. The secondary traumatic stress experienced by psychological counselors, who have almost daily contact with individuals who have been exposed to these traumas, has been the subject of our research. In this study, it was aimed to examine the secondary traumatic stress levels of psychological counselors in Osmaniye on the basis of various variables. The sample of the study consists of 120 psychological counselors serving in Osmaniye. The "Sociodemographic Information Form" was applied to the psychological counselors participating in the research in order to learn their personal information, and the "Secondary Traumatic Stress Scale" was applied to determine the secondary traumatic stress levels. SPSS package program was used in the analysis of the data obtained from psychological counselors. Before data analysis, data classification was made and it was checked whether there were extreme values. Then, analyzes were carried out according to the parametric distribution of the data. The "Mann-Whitney U, Kruskal Wallis" test was applied to the data that did not show parametric distribution. According to the results of the research, the secondary traumatic stress of the psychological counselors differed in the sub-dimensions of avoidance and arousal according to gender, and when the psychological counselors were examined according to whether they volunteered in aid organizations, there was a significant difference in the sub-dimensions of involuntary influence and avoidance. When examined according to whether there is a history or not, it was determined that there was a significant difference in all sub-dimensions of involuntary affect, avoidance and aroused.