Introduction
Fatigue is a body condition in which a person experiences feelings of heaviness, emotional burnout, and difficulty communicating due to various causes. It can lead to adverse changes in personality and consciousness, thereby complicating daily activities. Compassion fatigue and corrections fatigue are common for correctional employees. They are accompanied by a variety of signs and symptoms that significantly impede professional activities and disrupt the processes of helping others. Studying compassion and corrections fatigue is critical because society needs to overcome burnout and learn how to maintain the comfort and well-being of professionals working with people.
Signs and Symptoms
Compassion fatigue is a condition that occurs when there is an accumulation of emotional and physical exhaustion that results in a decrease in a person’s capacity for compassion. The development of this fatigue is influenced by work stress, attitudes toward the profession, work style and conditions, seniority, and gender (Aslan et al., 2022). Compassion fatigue manifests as tension, increased fatigue, anxiety, and depression. Personnel may feel guilty because they fail to perform well and take on more responsibilities. People with this fatigue tend to be challenging to relate to, distracted in their work, and feel increased irritation over their inability to get the job done. People have low self-esteem because their problems seem insignificant compared to those they help.
Corrections fatigue is characterized by a stressful state that arises from working in a correctional facility. Because professionals are constantly confronted with individuals who need help in correctional facilities, they are accompanied by psychological and even physical hazards due to the conditions of the environment. Such individuals often experience disturbances in personal relationships, frustration with the joys of daily life, and its projection onto family and friends. Corrections fatigue can incline a person to use psychoactive substances to cope with stress. As a consequence, there are disturbances in sleep, work, and rest patterns, sudden weight gain or loss, and unstable blood pressure. If stress persists, the person may develop depression and negative urges that threaten themselves and others.
Impact on People Working in Corrections
Compassion fatigue occurs when a person is required to work closely with others in difficult situations. Compassion fatigue often accompanies employees when working in a correctional facility because there are more sources of stress and tension in prisons. The presence of fatigue causes staff to no longer feel satisfied with their work, and the rationality of the correctional facility declines. Staff may experience solid psychological reactions (e.g., death, self-harm, assault) and fail to cope with this stress (Hewson et al., 2022). In addition, the care and concern shown to individuals in a correctional facility directly lead to the development of anxiety (Zhang et al., 2021). It is likely that once compassion fatigue develops, staff will not be able to return to work because other people’s problems will affect them so much that their ability to empathize will disappear.
Compassion fatigue occurs because correctional conditions are severe enough to provoke changes in the psychological stability of staff. Professionals tend to empathize with inmates, so someone else’s trauma leaves an imprint on them (Forman-Dolan et al., 2022). Constant stress and increased workload due to overcrowding in institutions lead to chronic feelings of fatigue and sleep disturbances (da Silva Venâncio et al., 2021). Productivity in the workplace falls because each inmate is a trigger for the development of anxiety and irritability. Staff may refuse to work because they are trying to avoid mental stress. Also, the culture in correctional facilities is such that a person becomes more rigid and uptight because that is the only way to protect their psyche. Staff ceases to regard their work as meaningful because the environment is becoming increasingly violent and traumatic.
Coping Strategies
Any kind of fatigue must be overcome to function normally in society and maintain emotional stability in the future. Coping strategies should be the main tools to overcome compassion and corrections fatigue to support staff (Al Barmawi et al., 2019). For compassion fatigue, a strategy to redistribute workload and provide staff with an improved work environment is appropriate (Aslan et al., 2022). Strategies to support professionals’ personal strengths and accomplishments should be implemented to avoid problems with derealization. The primary strategy is to change the work environment by implementing the staff’s psychological support tools. When working with inmates, staff should not contribute to an oppressive culture but rather strive to develop an adequate correctional environment.
Conclusion
Thus, compassion and corrections fatigue are accompanied by increased susceptibility to stress and emotional and psychological sensitivity to others’ problems. Individuals with these conditions are accompanied by derealization – a detachment from reality due to the inability to cope with daily routine and professional tasks. For correctional officers, derealization and corrections fatigue lead to problems with sleep and appetite and problems with family because they model and relive the traumatic experiences of prisoners. Productivity drops significantly because staff cannot cope with tasks due to a dysfunctional mental environment. To overcome fatigue, it is necessary to use coping strategies that include changing the work environment, redistributing workloads, and incorporating psychological support tools.
References
Al Barmawi, M. A., Subih, M., Salameh, O., Sayyah Yousef Sayyah, N., Shoqirat, N., & Abdel-Azeez Eid Abu Jebbeh, R. (2019). Coping strategies as moderating factors to compassion fatigue among critical care nurses. Brain and Behavior, 9(4). Web.
Aslan, H., Erci, B., & Pekince, H. (2022). Relationship between compassion fatigue in nurses, and work-related stress and the meaning of life.Journal of Religion and Health, 61(3), 1848–1860. Web.
da Silva Venâncio, L., Coutinho, B. D., Mont’Alverne, D., & Andrade, R. F. (2021). Burnout and quality of life among correctional officers in a women’s correctional facility. Revista Brasileira De Medicina Do Trabalho: Publicacao Oficial Da Associacao Nacional De Medicina Do Trabalho-ANAMT, 18(3), 312–321. Web.
Forman-Dolan, J., Caggiano, C., Anillo, I., & Kennedy, T. D. (2022). Burnout among professionals working in corrections:A two stage review.International journal of environmental research and public health, 19(16). Web.
Hewson, T., Gutridge, K., Bernard, Z., Kay, K., & Robinson, L. (2022). A systematic review and mixed-methods synthesis of the experiences, perceptions and attitudes of prison staff regarding adult prisoners who self-harm.BJPsych Open, 8(4). Web.
Zhang, L., Zhang, T., Ren, Z., & Jiang, G. (2021). Predicting compassion fatigue among psychological hotline counselors using machine learning techniques. Current psychology (New Brunswick, N.J.), 1–12. Web.