Increases in more urgent calls from people in life-threatening situations during the pandemic has resulted in unmanageable stress levels and burnout for domestic violence crisis line workers.
"I have to remind myself that I am just a person. I am not a miracle worker. I am doing what I can," one worker said.
Araujo, now 33, started working for Noah Project in December 2014, inspired by the work she saw them doing during her stay, and she is now the victim advocate and Child Protective Services liaison. She helps callers work through domestic violence situations like the one her mother experienced. But when the Covid-19 pandemic started, she said, the calls changed.
Araujo was not isolated in her experience: Staff members from local domestic violence organizations in Oregon, Maine, Kansas, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and the District of Columbia told NBC News they had also experienced increases in more urgent calls from people in life-threatening situations during the pandemic, often resulting in unmanageable stress levels and burnout for workers.
"At first, I was like, 'Oh man, I'm just not getting good sleep,'" Arias said."But the moment I started noticing the trend that it was happening long term, for weeks at a time, months, I was like, 'OK, this is something that is coming from something else.'" Mikisha Hooper, who leads Texas Council on Family Violence's annual reporting on intimate partner homicides, said there was a 22 percent increase in all intimate partner fatalities in Texas from 2019 to 2020, partly attributing the increase to"the conditions of the pandemic," including isolation and economic stressors. With both crisis line calls and fatality rates rising, it makes coping more difficult for workers, often leading to feelings of personal responsibility.
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