Compassion fatigue in the lab

Science has an interesting article about the quite serious issue of compassion fatigue amongst those who care for, and work with, laboratory animals:

Health care workers and pet veterinarians are no strangers to compassion fatigue. Being surrounded by suffering and dying patients can extract a profound mental, emotional, and physical toll—a sort of traumatic stress by proxy. But the condition also strikes a shocking number of lab animal workers, a community of tens of thousands worldwide that includes everyone from cage cleaners to veterinarians who oversee entire animal facilities.

Besides the symptoms Sessions experienced, those who handle lab animals may face insomnia, chronic physical ailments, zombielike lack of empathy, and, in extreme cases, severe depression, substance abuse, and thoughts of suicide. As many as nine in 10 people in the profession will suffer from compassion fatigue at some point during their careers, according to recent research, more than twice the rate of those who work in hospital intensive care units. It’s one of the leading reasons animal care workers quit.

Yet few in the animal research community want to talk about the problem—and few want to listen.

Everyone Science spoke to for this story who works with lab animals stressed that they are critical for biomedical research. These caregivers also feel deeply bonded to these creatures, from rodents to rabbits to monkeys. This dichotomy puts them in a difficult position: Unlike doctors or pet vets, those in the lab animal community aren’t just surrounded by pain and death—they’re often the ones causing it. Experimental drugs can sicken animals, implanted devices may cause discomfort, and euthanasia typically comes long before an animal would die of natural causes.

“It’s one of the only caring professions where you have to harm the beings you’re caring for,” says Megan LaFollette, program director at the North American 3Rs Collaborative, which focuses on improving the lives—and reducing the numbers—of research animals.

That’s made those in this field loath to reach out for help. At best, friends and family don’t understand what they do, or why. At worst, animal rights groups vilify them as torturers and murderers. Institutions are squeamish about discussing or addressing compassion fatigue, for fear of attracting negative attention to their animal research programs, often hidden from public view in university basements or windowless facilities. So those who tend to lab animals have largely suffered in silence: Compassion fatigue is an invisible population’s invisible disease.

 This is an obviously difficult problem.  Look at the dichotomy in this person's job:

Catherine Schuppli is all too familiar with the dilemma. A veterinarian who oversees two rodent facilities at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, she seeks to foster empathy in the workers she trains so they provide better—and more compassionate—animal care. She shows her trainees videos of rats navigating obstacle courses, hoisting tiny buckets on a string, and even playing fetch with miniature balls. “The staff comes to realize how smart and cute they are,” Schuppli says.

But on other days, Schuppli trains people how to decapitate the rats. Using what is effectively a tiny guillotine—a common form of euthanasia when gas or drugs could compromise an autopsy—she sometimes performs several of the procedures per day. The work has made her angry, depressed, and drained of energy—all of which she’s tried to suppress. While training others how to turn their emotions on, she’s found herself shutting her own off.

 The article goes on to note that addressing it as a problem has not been easy.   I can see why...