Workplace-related psychological distress costs Australia up to $17.4 billion per year. Current estimates indicate that at least $292,770 is spent per mental-health-related workers’ compensation case. Of the causes of poor psychosocial outcomes in Australian workplaces, exposure to trauma is among the leading causes of work-related mental ill health, according to the white paper, titled Vicarious Trauma in the Workplace: A Silent Hazard on the Rise. This follows the release of a recent Lawyers Weekly podcast episode recently, which discussed the rise of psychosocial risks within workplaces. 

Speaking to Lawyers Weekly, the co-founder and director of psychological services at the Centre for Corporate Health, Rachel Clements, said that there were a number of legal implications for leaving this kind of trauma unchecked.

“As we have seen from the recent high court ruling (Kozarov v Victoria), there is now a precedent set regarding the cost to the business. Beyond that we will have to wait and see what various jurisdictions put in place more concretely with regards to legislation or codes of practice in this space,” she said.

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“In essence however, there is now the expectation that in roles or organisations where employees are exposed to trauma/traumatic content, organisations will need to proactively identify the risk and establish a clear prevention plan to ensure employees are supported in mitigating against the cost of trauma work.”

According to the white paper, increasingly, workers within industries such as journalism, media and publishing, banking, financial and insurance services, hospitality, and legal services are also now at an increased risk of being exposed to material, events and interactions that have left them vulnerable to developing vicarious trauma, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The last two years of the pandemic and the shift to working from home have worked as a duality regarding an increased prevalence of vicarious trauma. The work may be higher in volume or more complex, and we don’t have the same support in the form of immediate collegial or leadership support. 

“Professionals who support the community, such as those in the legal sector, are dealing with a degree of heightened emotions that previously they likely hadn’t seen before. For legal professionals, this may look like an increase in unreasonable client behaviours such as aggression, anger, threats of violence, harassment or intimidation. Clients may also be uncooperative, unreasonably demanding or argumentative. Additionally, and equally important to note is the cumulative exposure to traumatic or distressing material. For legal professionals, this may include when reviewing documentation involving distressing and detailed descriptions of personal accounts of suicide, loss, grief, depression, anxiety, abuse, drugs, alcohol or unstable, traumatic and reactive lives,” Ms Clements explained.

“Pre-pandemic, this work would have been primarily performed in an office environment which provided support in the form of managerial or peer debriefing. For many, this was a necessary (but unidentified) support for processing and dealing with the traumatic or difficult content/material. Now that many professionals have been working remotely, they have been removed from this form of immediate support. So, there is an absence of strategies for dealing with the traumatic or difficult content in their role.”

Because of this, the report urges organisations to embed protocols and processes that include “psychoeducation and literacy around vicarious trauma”. This will help increase awareness around mental health and equip employees with the tools to deal with such traumas and allows for the creation of initiatives that deliver improved employee wellbeing outcomes throughout prevention, intervention and recovery.

“In the legal profession, as within many industries, you can’t ‘design out’ vicarious trauma as an inherent psychosocial risk within a role. This means leaders and HR or WHS professionals must get creative on managing the risk,” Ms Clements added.

“Firstly, it’s essential to conduct a psychosocial risk review to gain insight into how this risk plays out in your firm or team. Variables such as how psychologically safe a culture is and how supportive leaders are perceived can be the difference between how at risk or not at risk your people are to experiencing vicarious trauma.”

According to Ms Clements, leaders and team members within organisations should be upskilling to mitigate risks of vicarious trauma, as well as adopting a peer-to-peer support program within their organisations and proactive wellness checks.

“In the legal profession there is often a culture of trauma being part of the job and lawyers just must persevere through it. This culture means lawyers often don’t reach out for help early, instead waiting until their wellbeing and mental health is so depleted that significant intervention and recovery is required. Proactive Well Checks take this out of the equation, whereby a regular check in session with a psychologist is set up, maybe once a quarter, for those lawyers who are working on particularly traumatic matters. This allows for early intervention, preventing little problems from becoming bigger,” she said.

“It’s also important to have early intervention and recovery support services in place to ensure that when trauma is taking a toll on an employee’s wellbeing, timely and professional support is provided to prevent further depletion of wellbeing and prevent the submission of psychological injury claims.”