Vicarious resilience in sexual assault and domestic violence advocates.
There is little research related to sexual assault and domestic violence advocates' experiences, with the bulk of the literature focused on stressors and systemic barriers that negatively impact efforts to assist survivors. However, advocates participating in these studies have also emphasized the positive impact they experience consequent to their work. This study explores the positive impact.



Vicarious resilience, personal trauma experiences, peer relational quality, and perceived organizational support in advocates (n = 222) are examined. Also, overlap among the conceptual components of vicarious resilience is explored.



The first set of multiple regressions showed that personal trauma experiences and peer relational health predicted compassion satisfaction and vicarious posttraumatic growth, with organizational support predicting only compassion satisfaction. The second set of multiple regressions showed that (a) there was significant shared variance between vicarious posttraumatic growth and compassion satisfaction; (b) after accounting for vicarious posttraumatic growth, organizational support accounted for significant variance in compassion satisfaction; and (c) after accounting for compassion satisfaction, peer relational health accounted for significant variance in vicarious posttraumatic growth.



Results suggest that it may be more meaningful to conceptualize advocates' personal growth related to their work through the lens of a multidimensional construct such as vicarious resilience. Organizational strategies promoting vicarious resilience (e.g., shared organizational power, training components) are offered, and the value to trauma-informed care of fostering advocates' vicarious resilience is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record
Department of Educational Psychology, University of Oklahoma.
Lisa L
LL
Frey
Department of Educational Psychology, University of Oklahoma.
Denise
D
Beesley
Department of Psychology, University of Oklahoma.
Deah
D
Abbott
Department of Educational Psychology, University of Oklahoma.
Elizabeth
E
Kendrick
D000328:Adult; D017579:Domestic Violence / Q000523:psychology*; D004645:Empathy; D006801:Humans; D009784:Occupational Diseases / Q000523:psychology*; D010344:Patient Advocacy; D000067073:Psychological Trauma / Q000523:psychology*; D055500:Resilience, Psychological; D012742:Sex Offenses / Q000523:psychology*; D012944:Social Support