Words Matter – Secondary Traumatic Stress

CIPHER created the Words Matter campaign to share and promote a collective understanding of many well-known and used mental health terms that describe various occupationally related challenges many public safety personnel (PSP), healthcare workers (HCWs), veterans, and their families face every day.

Secondary traumatic stress describes a mental health challenge that results from indirect exposure to details of one or more potentially psychologically traumatic events in the course of professional duties. Such indirect exposure is also known as vicarious trauma. Learn more about it here.