ABSTRACT
If you have read the previous nine chapters, you might be feeling overwhelmed by everything school personnel should do to protect the health and well-being of students, families, and staff before, during, and after a suicidal crisis. On one hand, this is healthy realism: Working with suicidal clients has been consistently ranked as among the most stressful of all professional experiences. Ninety percent of school psychologists who reported doing crisis work described negative physical, emotional, and professional consequences (Bolnik & Brock, 2005). On the other hand, there are many downsides of choosing a profession where you take care of others but not yourself: burnout; compassion fatigue; and vicarious, or secondary, traumatization. We start with definitions, provide a case study of compassion fatigue, and end with recommendations for managing stress and burnout at a personal, professional, and organizational level.
