Trauma can have far reaching effects – even for those who experience it indirectly. Compassion fatigue, which often occurs for caring professionals who provide support for traumatized individuals, involves symptoms of secondary traumatic stress and job burnout. Anticipatory traumatic reaction is a future-focused form of distress arising from media reports and social discussions of disasters and large-scale negative events. The current study aimed to investigate the relationship and interactions between these two conditions, both stress responses arising from secondary exposure to trauma. A cohort of 48 youth workers completed measures of secondary traumatic stress, burnout, compassion satisfaction, general distress, and anticipatory traumatic reaction. Anticipatory traumatic reaction magnified the relationship between secondary traumatic stress and general distress. Mediation analysis showed that general distress connected secondary traumatic stress with burnout. Moderated mediation analyses indicated that anticipatory traumatic reaction interacted with general distress in connecting secondary traumatic stress with burnout. The results suggested that youth workers’ levels of depression, anxiety, and stress may help link secondary traumatic stress to burnout. High levels of anticipatory traumatic reaction may exacerbate distress, potentially putting youth workers at greater risk of burnout. Longitudinal and experimental studies should clarify the interactions between anticipatory traumatic reaction and compassion fatigue and determine if anticipatory traumatic reaction can facilitate burnout for people in other occupations. It will be important to identify interventions to mitigate this form of distress.

Two studies, with a total of 707 participants, developed and examined the reliability and validity of a measure for anticipatory traumatic reaction (ATR), a novel construct describing a form of distress that may occur in response to threat-related media reports and discussions. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis resulted in a scale comprising three subscales: feelings related to future threat; preparatory thoughts and actions; and disruption to daily activities. Internal consistency was .93 for the overall ATR scale. The ATR scale demonstrated convergent validity through associations with negative affect, depression, anxiety, stress, neuroticism, and repetitive negative thinking. The scale showed discriminant validity in relationships to Big Five characteristics. The ATR scale had some overlap with a measure of posttraumatic stress disorder, but also showed substantial separate variance. This research provides preliminary evidence for the novel construct of ATR as well as a measure of the construct. The ATR scale will allow researchers to further investigate anticipatory traumatic reaction in the fields of trauma, clinical practice, and social psychology.

In recent years, the global community has suffered uncertainty and threats to safety due to a variety of events, including terrorist attacks, large-scale accidents, natural disasters, and international conflicts. Indirect engagement with these events is made possible through the media. Numerous studies have found negative psychological outcomes following indirect exposure to trauma, either via media coverage or through care of people directly impacted. If media has the potential to effect even small negative changes in psychological health, then cumulative or more intense exposure might lead to more substantive effects.
This thesis explored whether trauma-related media consumption and ensuing social discussions may trigger a unique form of distress, referred to as Anticipatory Traumatic Reaction (ATR). This construct is based on the dual scaffold of (1) the diagnostic criteria of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) considered sub-clinically and (2) emotions, cognitions, and behaviours that have been associated with secondary exposure to trauma. Specifically, ATR is conceptualised as involving people overestimating future risk (for themselves or significant others) of traumatic events presented in the media and experiencing distress relating to feared outcomes. Affected individuals might engage in thoughts or behaviours designed to reduce uncertainty or prepare for adverse events and experience disruptions in day-to-day functioning.
A total of six studies (reported in the format of five stand-alone articles) were conducted. Study 1 was a quantitative meta-analysis of experimental studies that evaluated the overall effect of threat-related media on psychological outcomes. This study confirmed the association between trauma-related media exposure and negative psychological outcomes and provided evidence to support a causal pathway. Studies 2 and 3 (reported in a single journal article) generated a new psychometric measure to assess the novel construct of ATR and found preliminary evidence of this form of distress in a general population of Australians. Study 2 used exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis to construct a scale with three latent variables (feelings, preparation, and disruptions relating to ATR) and correlational analyses found evidence of convergent and discriminant validity for the scale. Study 3 provided additional validation of the scale, examined links with conceptually related variables pertaining to media consumption, and provided evidence for ATR as a construct that, despite some overlap, is separate and distinct from PTSD. The results also indicated that higher levels of ATR are associated with a greater degree of engagement with threat-related media and social discussions. Further, the results suggested that younger people might be at greater risk of ATR than older people, and that this may be partially accounted for by a greater proportion of social media news-gathering by younger people.
Study 4 explored possible links between ATR and a reaction to another form of secondary exposure to trauma – compassion fatigue, which occurs as a consequence of providing a caring role for traumatised individuals. The results suggested that high levels of ATR may exacerbate levels of depression, anxiety, and stress, potentially putting care workers at greater risk of job burnout. Study 5, a meta-analytic review of the efficacy of mindfulness interventions for treating PTSD, indicated that, across studies, mindfulness was effective in reducing symptoms of PTSD. Given some symptomatic and conceptual similarities between PTSD and ATR, this finding pointed to mindfulness as a potentially useful technique for mitigating ATR. The final study, Study 6, assessed proposed risk factors for ATR and used an online experiment with random assignment to test a series of brief interventions to attenuate ATR. The findings suggested that risk factors for experiencing higher levels of ATR included being female, being younger, living with a mental illness, repetitive negative thinking, intolerance of uncertainty, personal distress empathy, fantasy empathy, and a concern about world politics. Both a cognitive intervention to address probability neglect and a mindfulness intervention showed promise in attenuating momentary ATR.
The current research provides preliminary evidence for ATR as a newly identified psychological condition that may occur for some people in response to media exposure and social discussions of disasters and large-scale threats. If, as suggested by the results of this research, people with existing mental illness are at greater risk for ATR and that ATR might exacerbate existing symptoms, it will be important to identify vulnerable subsets of this population so that clinicians can intervene to reduce ATR and limit distress. Because media exposure to traumatic events is a basis for ATR, the findings have implications for presentation of media content. This thesis adds to the body of knowledge in the fields of trauma, social psychology, and clinical practice.

This study investigated the relationship and interactions between compassion fatigue and anticipatory traumatic reaction (ATR), both conditions arising from secondary exposure to trauma. Compassion fatigue, which often occurs for caring professionals, involves symptoms of secondary traumatic stress and job burnout. ATR is a future-focused form of distress arising from media reports and social discussions of large-scale negative events and threats. A cohort of 48 youth workers from a not-for-profit company located in the New England region completed measures of secondary traumatic stress, burnout, compassion satisfaction, general distress, and anticipatory traumatic reaction. Surveys were completed via the online Qualtrics platform. Results showed that ATR magnified the relationship between secondary traumatic stress and general distress. Moderated mediation analyses indicated that anticipatory traumatic reaction interacted with general distress in connecting secondary traumatic stress with burnout. High levels of ATR may exacerbate distress, potentially putting care workers at greater risk of burnout.

Two studies, with a total of 707 participants (recruited via a Qualtrics online survey), developed and examined the reliability and validity of a measure for Anticipatory Traumatic Reaction (ATR), a novel construct describing a form of distress that may occur in response to threat-related media reports and discussions. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis resulted in a scale comprising three subscales: feelings related to future threat; preparatory thoughts and actions; and disruption to daily activities. Internal consistency was 0.93 for the overall ATR scale. The ATR scale demonstrated convergent validity through associations with negative affect, depression, anxiety, stress, neuroticism, and repetitive negative thinking. The scale showed discriminant validity in relationships to Big Five characteristics. The ATR scale had some overlap with a measure of post-traumatic stress disorder, but also showed substantial separate variance. The ATR scale will allow researchers to further investigate anticipatory traumatic reaction in the fields of trauma, clinical practice, and social psychology.

An online experiment assessed the effectiveness of interventions intended to mitigate anticipatory traumatic reaction, a form of future-focused distress occurring in response to threat-related media reports and discussions. A stratified sample of 512 Australian adults (recruited via online Qualtrics panels) completed measures of anticipatory traumatic reaction, positive and negative affect, empathy, intolerance of uncertainty, and repetitive negative thinking. Participants then viewed a stimulus video containing a series of terrorism and crime reports, and were randomly assigned to one of seven conditions. The conditions consisted of six brief online interventions, based on standard psychological treatments for anxiety and mood disorders, and one control condition. Risk factors for experiencing higher levels of general anticipatory traumatic reaction included being female, being younger, living with a mental illness, repetitive negative thinking, intolerance of uncertainty, personal distress empathy, fantasy empathy, and a concern about world politics. A cognitive intervention to address probability neglect and a mindfulness intervention both significantly attenuated momentary anticipatory traumatic reaction. This research provides a platform for better understanding the phenomenon of anticipatory traumatic reaction and reducing levels of distress for affected individuals.