Secondary traumatic stress, or STS, was first conceptualized by psychologist Charles Figley in 1995 as the natural emotional and behavioral response to learning about a significant other’s traumatic event, with symptoms that can be “nearly identical to PTSD.” The disorder arises from indirect exposure: hearing details of abuse, neglect, bereavement or violence rather than experiencing them directly. Symptoms typically include intrusive re-experiencing, avoidance of trauma reminders, negative alterations in mood and cognition, and shifts in arousal and reactivity. Because the updated DSM-5 recognizes that secondary exposure can, in some cases, meet full criteria for a PTSD diagnosis, the construct has gained clinical weight, yet its definition remains contested, overlapping with related ideas such as compassion fatigue and vicarious traumatization. That conceptual muddle, the authors argue, has made it difficult to understand how secondary trauma actually manifests in schools, where measurement tools developed for nurses and counselors may not fit.

To capture the lived experience, the team conducted semi-structured online interviews with 11 school personnel drawn from the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland and England. Participants included teachers, pastoral and safeguarding leads, special education staff and principals, with experience ranging from three to more than twenty years, and from both primary and secondary settings. The interviews, lasting roughly an hour each, were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis within a constructivist paradigm, meaning the researchers treated reality as socially constructed and knowledge as co-created between researcher and participant. The approach was predominantly inductive, with codes and themes built from the ground up from participants’ accounts, though informed by Figley’s framework, Stamm’s Professional Quality of Life model and DSM-5 criteria for secondary exposure.

Four major themes emerged from the analysis. The first, “A System Under Strain,” describes an institutional environment in which workload pressure, performative “tick-box” training, absent supervision and a culture that discourages help-seeking reinforce one another. Participants described one-off trauma-informed training sessions that were never mentioned again, supervision meetings that functioned as box-checking exercises, and a shame-based climate in which admitting struggle carried professional stigma. One participant criticized the language of “resilience” as an individualizing human-resources term that obscures systemic causes of burnout, remarking bitterly that “an individual burns out. The system doesn’t burn you out.” Another noted the imbalance of institutional priorities, arguing that school culture should not be “90 percent academic and 10 percent how to be a person.”

The second theme, “The Intrusive Weight of Trauma,” documents the personal toll in strikingly clinical terms. One former pastoral lead described being unable to shake graphic mental images from a parent’s disclosure, comparing the experience to “watching Hammer Horror films in my head,” an account the authors link to the DSM-5 intrusion criterion. Others reported sleep disruption, nausea, tearfulness, and reactivation of their own past traumas; one participant recognized the physical sensations of her father’s heart attack resurfacing when she learned a student’s father had died similarly. Guilt emerged in multiple forms: retrospective guilt for not feeling worse, comparative guilt when looking at their own children, and guilt over not knowing about a student’s suffering sooner. The effects persisted for years, with one teacher describing a still-physical response to an event a decade old, and many described carrying students’ despair into their home lives, in the phrase that gives the study its title: “you are left holding their despair.”

The third theme, “The Nurturer and The Fixer,” explores how professional identity shapes vulnerability. Staff who saw themselves as parental figures, buying food and shoes for pupils, extending care beyond the classroom, reported deep satisfaction when they could help but heartbreak and identity threat when they could not. For some, becoming a parent themselves prompted a healthy detachment, reframing teaching from an all-consuming identity to “just what you do.” The authors draw on social identity theory to argue that when a professional self rooted in relational care collides with persistent powerlessness, the result is not mere emotional distress but a fundamental threat to identity, compounded by institutional cultures that prioritize performance metrics.

The fourth theme, “Navigating the Burden,” catalogues the improvised coping strategies staff deployed in the absence of formal support. The most valued resource was informal peer connection with colleagues “all in the same boat,” while employer-provided counseling hotlines were widely distrusted as performative. Some practiced compartmentalization, “putting it in a box”; others journaled, sought private therapy, or, in one candid admission, coped with wine after work. Confidentiality constraints often prevented safeguarding staff from discussing cases with colleagues outside their privileged circle, forcing them to say “I’m fine” when they were not. Notably, most participants also reported positive experiences, including a sense of making a difference and, in one exceptional case, vicarious resilience, an uplifting transformation gained from witnessing students’ own strength.

That exceptional case may be the study’s most consequential finding. One participant, who worked in schools for an external agency rather than a school itself, received regular formal supervision, psychoeducation about vicarious trauma, and a protected weekly well-being hour. Her account stands alone in describing adequate support, and the authors argue it demonstrates that the principles of trauma-informed care, usually framed as student-facing, apply equally to staff-facing organizational structures. Under the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s framework, her supervision and protected time promote safety, team-based collaboration fosters peer support and mutuality, and active psychoeducation enhances transparency and empowerment. Where those structures existed, staff appeared buffered; where they did not, the strained school system became, in the authors’ words, “fertile ground” for secondary traumatic stress to take hold.

The study also carries diagnostic implications. While participants’ accounts clearly reflected intrusion and alterations in mood and arousal, one criterion was conspicuously absent: avoidance, in the strict post-DSM-5 sense of actively steering clear of people, places or things reminiscent of the trauma. The authors suggest this may be structural rather than incidental, since teachers cannot simply avoid the students at the center of their concern, echoing earlier findings that avoidance “was not prominently identified” among public-school educators. They also propose a new concept, “mirrored trauma,” to describe how staff whose personal histories resemble their students’ experiences, growing up amid volatility, for instance, may find their own trauma reactivated even as that shared history enables deeper empathy. Whether this mirroring protects or harms, they note, likely depends on how well the individual has processed their own past.

The researchers are careful about limits. The sample of 11 participants spans three jurisdictions with distinct governance structures and historical legacies, including Northern Ireland’s Troubles, but the analysis treated the group as a whole, and the findings are not statistically generalizable, though the authors argue they are transferable to similar populations. Social desirability bias remains possible, and some participants may have minimized or lacked awareness of their symptoms, a phenomenon the literature attributes in part to the “grandiosity” of the teaching role.

Even so, the implications are pointed. The authors call for a shift from reactive, individualized well-being initiatives toward proactive, structural supports: protected supervision, team debriefing, integrated psychoeducation and minimum standards embedded in policy rather than left to institutional goodwill. Without such systemic change, they warn, the emotional labor of supporting trauma-exposed children will continue to fall on individuals unequipped to bear it, with consequences for staff retention, student outcomes and the capacity of schools to serve the growing number of children affected by adversity. The study’s participants, in their own words, were not asking for resilience training. They were asking for a system that does not leave them alone with the weight.

The core of this research revolves around an increasingly significant concern: teacher burnout. In educational systems across the globe, the phenomenon of burnout is not merely a buzzword but a pervasive issue that affects the quality of education and the mental health of instructors. Burnout manifests through emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and a sense of reduced personal accomplishment. The ramifications are far-reaching—affecting not just teachers but impacting students, families, and communities at large. Hence, understanding the factors that contribute to or alleviate this condition is imperative for fostering healthier educational environments.

Within this context, hope and optimism emerge as essential psychological assets. They provide a buffer against the stresses inherent in the teaching profession. Hope can be defined as the perceived capability to derive pathways to desired goals and motivate oneself to use those pathways. On the other hand, optimism refers to the general expectation that good things will happen in the future. The researchers hypothesized that higher levels of hope and optimism would correlate with enhanced well-being and reduced burnout among teachers, a premise that their extensive analysis sought to validate.

Utilizing advanced statistical techniques, including structural equation modeling, the study explored intricate relationships between hope, optimism, teacher well-being, and burnout. Structural equation modeling is a sophisticated multivariate statistical analysis technique that is used to analyze structural relationships. This method allows for the evaluation of complex variable relationships by simultaneously estimating multiple regression equations. By applying this approach, the researchers were able to provide empirical evidence supporting their hypotheses regarding the positive impact of hope and optimism on teacher outcomes.

The findings of the study are quite illuminating; they reveal that higher levels of hope positively correlate with teacher well-being. This suggests that when teachers possess a strong sense of hope, they are more likely to experience positive mental health outcomes. Moreover, hope was found to serve as a mediating factor between optimism and teacher well-being. Essentially, this means that optimistic teachers, who harbored hope, were more likely to report better mental health and lower burnout levels compared to their less hopeful peers.

Furthermore, the study delineates a quantifiable link between teacher well-being and burnout. Teachers who reported higher levels of well-being were less likely to experience symptoms of burnout. This relationship underscores the importance of fostering an environment that nurtures emotional health among educators. By prioritizing teachers’ mental and emotional well-being, educational institutions can combat burnout effectively, leading to a more engaging and fruitful learning experience for students.

Moving beyond theoretical implications, the practical aspects of these findings are astounding. Schools and educational stakeholders are urged to implement programs and support systems that cultivate hope and optimism within teaching staff. Such interventions could take the form of training workshops that focus on developing resilience, promoting positive psychological practices, and encouraging open discussions about mental health among educators. Emphasizing hope can empower teachers to envision positive outcomes even amidst challenges, thus reducing burnout’s prevalence.

The significance of this research extends beyond academia; it holds vital implications for educational policy. Policymakers are encouraged to advocate for systemic changes that prioritize teachers’ mental health, considering it as critical to the educational ecosystem’s overall efficacy. Funding for mental health resources, peer support networks, and professional development that includes psychological resilience training could transform the teaching landscape.

In light of the study’s revelations, the education community stands at a crossroads, with a pressing need to reconceptualize how teacher wellness is approached. It is not merely about classroom management or student performance; it is essential to foster a holistic approach where the well-being of educators is viewed as a foundational pillar for a thriving educational environment. As hope and optimism rise to the forefront of this discourse, their development should become an educational imperative.

As the authors suggest in their findings, the cultivation of hope and optimism isn’t solely a personal endeavor but a communal responsibility. Schools must create a culture that values these qualities, wherein teachers can share experiences, support one another, and work collaboratively to build a positive work environment. This collaborative spirit could very well be the antidote to the distressing trends of teacher attrition and cumulative stress faced in today’s educational settings.

In conclusion, the contributions of hope and optimism to teacher well-being and burnout, as explored in this influential study, signify a crucial leap forward in understanding the psychological dimensions of the teaching profession. By embracing these findings, the educational landscape can evolve towards one that prioritizes the holistic well-being of its educators, thereby enriching the learning experiences of countless students across the globe. This research not only adds a layer of complexity to the dialogue surrounding teacher burnout but also invigorates the need for actionable change. As we continue to unveil the interconnectedness of emotion, mental health, and professional satisfaction, it becomes increasingly clear that nurturing hope and optimism in teachers can lead to a brighter, more resilient future for education.

Subject of Research: The contributions of hope and optimism to teacher well-being and burnout.

Article Title: Examining the contributions of hope and optimism to teacher wellbeing and burnout through a structural equation modeling analysis.

Article References:

Taati Jeliseh, M., Koleini, N., Zohrabi, M. et al. Examining the contributions of hope and optimism to teacher wellbeing and burnout through a structural equation modeling analysis.
Discov Psychol 5, 105 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s44202-025-00454-0

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44202-025-00454-0

Keywords: Teacher Well-being, Burnout, Hope, Optimism, Structural Equation Modeling, Educational Psychology.