{"id":26780,"date":"2017-10-12T19:01:16","date_gmt":"2017-10-13T00:01:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=26780"},"modified":"2017-10-12T19:01:16","modified_gmt":"2017-10-13T00:01:16","slug":"after-the-disaster-comes-disaster-fatigue-heres-how-to-fight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=26780","title":{"rendered":"After the disaster comes disaster fatigue. Here\u2019s how to fight"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"jumbo-img-container\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"jumbo-img wp-post-image\" src=\"https:\/\/grist.files.wordpress.com\/2017\/10\/handspuertorico.jpg?w=1024&amp;h=576&amp;crop=1\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/grist.files.wordpress.com\/2017\/10\/handspuertorico.jpg?w=1024&amp;h=576&amp;crop=1 1024w, https:\/\/grist.files.wordpress.com\/2017\/10\/handspuertorico.jpg?w=1200&amp;h=675&amp;crop=1 1200w, https:\/\/grist.files.wordpress.com\/2017\/10\/handspuertorico.jpg?w=330&amp;h=186&amp;crop=1 330w, https:\/\/grist.files.wordpress.com\/2017\/10\/handspuertorico.jpg?w=768&amp;h=432&amp;crop=1 768w, https:\/\/grist.files.wordpress.com\/2017\/10\/handspuertorico.jpg?w=970&amp;h=546&amp;crop=1 970w, https:\/\/grist.files.wordpress.com\/2017\/10\/handspuertorico.jpg 1600w\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" \/><\/div>\n<div class=\"article-content-container\">\n<div class=\"single-article-header\">\n<h3 class=\"page-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/grist.org\/article\/after-the-disaster-comes-disaster-fatigue-heres-how-to-fight-it\/\">After the disaster comes disaster fatigue. Here\u2019s how to fight <\/a>it.<\/h3>\n<div class=\"row collapse article-meta\"><span class=\"qa\">Q.<\/span><strong>\u00a0There have been so many disasters in one short month. I want to do my part to help, and I know that that kind of aid is a long game. This feels horrible to say: I just feel myself caring less and less. Harvey was shocking, Irma was distressing, and Maria felt \u2026 exhausting. There\u2019s so much destruction, and it doesn\u2019t stop. What can I do?<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body\">\n<p><strong>Gloomy and Guilty About It<\/strong><\/p>\n<aside class=\"logo-aside--ask-umbra medium-alignright\"><span class=\"qa\">A.<\/span> Of <em>course<\/em> this feels awful \u2014 not just the onslaught of disasters but our guilt at not being able to respond to them as we want to, to be the person we imagine ourselves to be.<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p>If you\u2019re feeling this way \u2014 exhausted, indifferent, culpable \u2014 rest assured, you\u2019re not alone. In the face of so many crises in a row, we\u2019re all exhausted. News coverage diminished for Hurricane Maria after Irma and Harvey, but <a href=\"https:\/\/fivethirtyeight.com\/features\/the-media-really-has-neglected-puerto-rico\/\">FiveThirtyEight<\/a> found that the number of people <em>seeking <\/em>information on Hurricane Maria also dropped significantly after Irma, as measured by Google searches.<\/p>\n<p>This may be due to \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.texasstandard.org\/stories\/after-so-many-disasters-nonprofit-relief-organizations-struggle-against-donor-fatigue\/\">disaster fatigue<\/a>,\u201d when prolonged exposure to news coverage of disasters causes potential donors or volunteers to lose motivation. To try and understand how to fight it, we can look to its more acute cousin, \u201ccompassion fatigue,\u201d which is exactly what it sounds like. Also called \u201csecondary trauma syndrome,\u201d it\u2019s a psychological condition commonly found in caregiving and direct relief professions and characterized by withdrawal, isolation, and a sense of apathy or helplessness.<\/p>\n<p>Patricia Smith, founder of the Compassion Fatigue Awareness Project and a certified Compassion Fatigue Specialist (yes, that\u2019s a thing) leads workshops with caregivers to help mitigate it. I asked her if the barrage of disasters could be inducing a kind of mass compassion fatigue.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After the disaster comes disaster fatigue. Here\u2019s how to fight it. Q.\u00a0There have been so many disasters in one short month. I want to do my part to help, and I know that that kind of aid is a long game. This feels horrible to say: I just feel myself caring less and less. Harvey [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[3316,16466,15759,16465],"class_list":["post-26780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-disaster","tag-disaster-fatigue","tag-grist","tag-hector-retamal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26780"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26780\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26781,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26780\/revisions\/26781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}