Social action art therapy as an intervention for compassion fatigue

•Social action art therapy can help empower domestic violence and sexual assault counselors.•A social action art based directive creates group cohesiveness as well as camaraderie.•Participation in social action art therapy based interventions would significantly reduce stress.

This study evaluated the effectiveness of a social action art therapy session to address symptoms of stress and compassion fatigue in counsellors working in domestic violence (DV) and sexual assault (SA) services. Participants were adult women (N = 30) who work with client survivors of DV and SA. Participants participated in three groups based on their workplace, and were asked to create art for a group peace pole. The peace pole has currency within the DV support community as a symbol of hope and safety. After creating individual artworks, each member glued their canvas squares onto the peace pole to create a unified group piece of art. The Compassion Fatigue Self-Test was used as a measure of compassion fatigue, and the Psychological Stress Measure 9 provided information regarding pre and post measures of symptomology changes. The results supported the hypothesis that participation in a social action art therapy based session could significantly reduce stress.