Assessing the impact of ongoing national terror: Social workers in Israel

The main goal of this study was to explore the connections between social workers' personal and professional exposure to national terror in Israel and their professional and personal distress experienced due to ongoing terror attacks. Data were collected from 406 social workers from Israel who worked in agencies that provide help to victims of terror and their families. The social workers reported low levels of burnout, low levels of stress, and medium-high levels of intrusive memories. Levels of personal and professional exposure were not associated with burnout, intrusive memories, or stress level. However, professional distress (burnout and intrusive memories) was positively associated with personal distress. In addition, a two-step hierarchical regression was conducted, revealing that when burnout and intrusive memories were added to the regression equation, the explained variance of the stress level increased. Neither burnout nor intrusive memories were found to be significant mediators between the independent variables and personal stress level, except in one case. Although the social workers coped relatively well with ongoing terror, it was clear that professional distress was associated with their personal stress.