Outside the Clinic Door: How Neighborhood Sociodemographic Disadvantage is Associated with Community Therapist Secondary Traumatic Stress and Emotional Exhaustion

ABSTRACT

Therapists serving families with high rates of trauma exposure in community mental health clinics face the potential risk of experiencing secondary traumatic stress and emotional exhaustion, both of which pose barriers for the implementation and sustainment of evidence-based practices. Previous research documents negative effects of living in socioeconomic disadvantaged neighborhoods on child development but has not examined the effects of working in these neighborhoods on therapist well-being. The current study merges publicly available data, administrative claims data on mental health services, and therapy survey data to 1) identify associations between neighborhood sociodemographic disadvantage and two community therapist well-being constructs, specifically secondary traumatic stress and emotional exhaustion; and 2) examine potential clinic- and therapist-level explanatory factors in the associations between neighborhood sociodemographic disadvantage and therapist well-being. A cumulative risk index approach was applied to calculate neighborhood sociodemographic disadvantage. Greater neighborhood sociodemographic disadvantage was significantly associated with higher levels of therapist secondary traumatic stress (B = .09, p < .05) but not emotional exhaustion. Because therapists in higher risk neighborhoods face higher secondary traumatic stress levels, additional research is needed to better understand how these therapists can be best supported, thus supporting families receiving treatment and implementation of evidence-based practices.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/23794925.2024.2310512.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

Funding for this research project, including the study design and data collection, analysis and interpretation of data, was supported by NIMH Grant [R01MH100134] to Anna Shan-Lai Lau and Lauren Brookman-Frazee, NIMH Grant [K23MH123067] to Teresa A. Lind, and NIDA Grant [T32DA039772] to Nancy A. Gonzales and Cady Berkel.