When stress turns into distress

You watch officers rescue a neglected dog so thin that he can barely walk. You stand by as a couple surrenders a cat they've had for only a week. You euthanize a dog who licks your face as you make the injection. You work with limited resources to fight a battle that seems endless, sometimes struggling with the coworkers at your side. You walk through kennels filled with the sounds of barking dogs, and clean cat cages that rarely stay empty for long. On top of it all, you're often unfairly judged by members of the public who fail to understand your work.

Stressed out? Who wouldn't be?

It's no surprise to shelter workers that their stress levels far exceed those of most other professionals. A 1996 study by Debra White and Ruth Shawhan entitled "Emotional responses of animal shelter workers to euthanasia", published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, featured excerpts from essays that reveal the thoughts of shelter workers in startling detail: "To make a decision to end a life is the hardest decision I have ever made,"wrote one shelter worker. "Much of my anger, guilt, frustration, and outright sadness is connected to my work and my passion for wanting to save the animals I kill,"wrote another. Some employees bottle up their emotions or become numb: "I have no feelings about euthanasia. It doesn't bother me. I've been at it too long."Another wrote of euthanasia: "I sometimes pretend it never happened". Regardless of how people cope with or compartmentalize these emotions, the stress inherent in animal care and control work often leads to insomnia, nightmares, feelings of detachment, irritability, even an inability to enjoy activities that once brought pleasure.

But it's not only euthanasia. In some cases the death of a healthy, unwanted animal is only a small part of the ongoing struggle. One worker quoted in White and Shawhan's study said that euthanizing an animal was often less traumatic than speaking to the person who surrendered the animal. Indeed, shelter workers' interactions with the public and constant exposure to trauma is comparable to the ordeals facing police officers, firefighters, emergency medical technicians, suicide hotline attendants, rape counselors, and hospice workers. And like these professionals devoted to helping others, shelter workers are at increased risk for a special type of stress called "compassion fatigue."A despair brought on by the weight of caring for and about trauma victims, compassion fatigue is far more crippling than the pressures encountered by professionals in the typical workplace. But animal shelter workers have one more complicating factor to deal with: They must help the victims of injustices while also offering assistance to the perpetrators of those injustices. And while child-protection advocates may also be able to claim this dual role, only animal shelter workers are given the task of ending the lives of those in their care.

In fact, the stress felt by shelter workers is increasingly being compared to the effects of "post-traumatic stress disorder,"an affliction often mentioned in reference to the experience of Vietnam veterans. The sights, sounds, and smells of traumatic events repeatedly find their way into a person's mind, and although specific memories are often repressed, their effects remain powerful. "Most people who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder are victims of war, natural disasters, or other tragedies such as airline crashes or automobile crashes,"says Teresa Wagner, MS, a private therapist and shelter volunteer. "Not to discount those experiences, but even war does end; people don't sign up for twenty years of active duty. It's very different in an animal shelter, where animals are surrendered as long as you work there."

What's more, shelter workers are often left to struggle alone. Unlike social-service workers and others in the "helping"professions, shelter workers may introduce themselves to people only to be greeted with a callous response: "Oh, you kill animals. I love animals so much... I could never do what you do."People forget about the adoptions, the humane education, the lost animals returned home, even the public benefits of a well-run animal control program. Instead, they tend to focus on the one aspect of the work that is the most misunderstood.

"It's one thing to do something difficult and get recognized for it; it's yet another thing to not be recognized and to be accused of having questionable motivations, to be called a killer,"says Jane Louise William, PhD, a psychotherapist who has spent time in shelters and conducted stress-management workshops for shelter workers. "It's so difficult to separate yourself from that distorted and toxic view of who you are and what you do, to remember it's just a product of ignorance and society's [tendency to disown] responsibility for companion animals."Family and close friends of shelter workers often have a hard time understanding the culture and the stress inherent in the work, a fact that leaves victims even more isolated.

Evidence shows that the intense stress felt by shelter workers leads to health problems, depression, destructive behaviors, and even addiction to alcohol and other drugs. Staff and volunteers who suffer the effects of stress are often not as productive as they would like to be, a fact that aggravates the situation even further. And, of course, on-the-job stress is a key component in the high turnover rates in many shelters, forcing managers to constantly hire new employees, requiring established employees to spend more time training coworkers, and generally lowering the expertise of the entire staff. Most importantly, and most often forgotten, is the fact that many people who work in animal shelters devote their lives to helping animals, leaving them with no lives of their own.