This is the part specific to animal care workers. Frankly and clearly, “compassion fatigue” is something specifically afflicting people who take care of others. This book is meant to address those who are taking care of others who are a different species. It is not framed or necessarily intended for those who are dealing with dangerous people and animals who live entwined in the underclasses of society. It is this latter problem that distinguishes animal control from humane society. Still, particularly if there is a kennel involved, taking care of animals is a major part of both jobs.
This book is careful to define its terms, but seems largely unaware of animal control problems and solutions, which relate more to law enforcement and emergency response. We need a second book but it’s a big help to have this one.
People who are callous, indifferent to animal distress, are unsuited to animal shelter work but may accumulate there and make the jobs of those who DO care deeply even more difficult than they already are. Addressing compassion-fatigue can supply the criteria for weeding out people who are there for the wrong reasons and help those who are struggling with the right reasons to become better self-managers so that they can last effectively in the jobs.
The claim of the Humane Society of the United States in a survey of more than one thousand shelter workers, is that compassion fatigue is NOT related to length of service, age, gender (except women come out a little more vulnerable than men), or performing euthanasia. (I’m not sure I really believe that last.) The manager or education officer is as likely a victim as the hands-on poop scooper. Because so few people really understand even the basics of what goes on in animal care, isolation and exasperation constantly pry at everyone in the field. This study found that over half of the workers score at extremely high risk of compassion fatigue. As Fakkema vividly puts it, “After a while you begin to get the idea that it would be more effective to euthanize the pet owners than the pets.”
Studies were also made of compassion SATISFACTION. What are the factors that make the work seem valuable and effective? Those who were able to cope said they felt they were doing the right thing, doing it well, and keeping in mind every small success.
Veterinarians, probably because they are seen as doctors, are not supposed to suffer from compassion fatigue or burnout. Most people see their pets as children and their veterinarians as a kind of pediatrician. (This is probably less true in livestock country where the veterinarian is more related to asset-management -- though the idea that ranchers don’t care about their animals is wrong, at least in my experience.) Again, the animals are not so much a problem as the owners. And a veterinarian makes enough money to get into big trouble with drinking, gambling, and the other stress-traps of our society. On the plus side, the veterinarian is in a position to really help and heal animals and has considerable status in the community.
The authors distinguish between compassion fatigue and burnout. Burnout is when there is never enough money, enough help, enough supplies or training to do an effective job. One can become worn out and bitter over it -- esp. when it is the direct result of the low regard the public and many politicians have for animal workers. But that’s not the same as having one’s heart broken by witnessing and addressing suffering in humans or other animals. You don’t need empathy to achieve burnout, but you do for both real care-giving effectiveness and the resulting stress.
Now I’m going to depart from the book to describe what I see as a major problem, the fanaticism of people who claim to be animal lovers but in fact have put so much exaggerated and unrealistic emphasis on what they consider to be cruelty issues that they interfere with the ordinary tasks of animal organizations.
I think there are three elements that are underlying the extremism.
1. An attempt to directly suppress end results rather than looking for and addressing root causes. For instance, attacking euthanasia itself rather than the failure to spay and neuter that creates far too many unwanted animals.
2. A failure to confront some of the greatest cruelties in our culture, which are related to the commodification of food animals rather than the mistreatment of pets. Taking on the slaughterhouses of this country is quite beyond attacking the local poundmaster.
3. Vulnerability and displacement in some people’s emotional lives, so that they project their own suffering onto animals and try to secure their own happiness by fancying that they are somehow making animals safer or happier.
We are in a time made chaotic by a scientific reframing of the cosmos that questions the nature of humankind in the universe. At the same time the translation of everything into money issues and the huge pressure calling for prosperity -- rather than honor, service or achievement -- as the source of happiness has left people feeling empty.
We are indeed suffering from trauma. Every night we see people starving, displaced, mutilated, and killed in war. Some of them are “other,” maybe Africans, some of them are ours, like our soldiers. Like any other victims of compassion fatigue, we citizens become rigid, unreasonably demanding, over-concerned, punishing. In my opinion, the whole country needs the self-evaluation and amelioration that this book outlines for the animal care community. If those workers were able to lead the way, it might have real political impact.
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