Compassion Fatigue: The cost of caring for the world

PHOTO: Unknown author on The Collection of War Photos

Disclaimer: This article discusses experiences of helplessness, anxiety and sadness. These feelings can be considered normal responses to distressing events. While these may not indicate mental health conditions, if you are concerned or believe it is significantly affecting your daily life, we encourage you to seek support from a qualified mental health professional. Everyone’s experience is unique and professional advice is the best way to ensure you receive the care and support that is right for you.

4 in 10 people across the world sometimes or often avoid the news, according to the 2025 Reuters Institute Digital News Report. At first glance, this appears to highlight a growing indifference to global crises. The reality is a growing surge of compassion fatigue — caused by caring too much.

Humanitarian aid relies on compassion

To understand compassion fatigue, the concept of compassion must first be unpacked. Compassion is widely understood as ‘a process that unfolds in response to suffering’. In layman terms, compassion is used interchangeably with kindness or empathy. It is more appropriately characterised by the ability to translate empathy into action in order to alleviate suffering. This definition of compassion is broken down into three components; noticing, feeling and responding. It is action that differentiates compassion from passively experiencing empathy for individuals caught up in traumatic events. It is compassion, not empathy, that fuels humanitarian efforts across the world.

The mobilisation of aid required to support people in need is dependent on the compassion of not just humanitarian workers or governments, but the general public. The united action of large groups of people are essential to gathering support, raising awareness and amassing donations to enact long-term change in disaster-ridden regions. 

Civilians such as former Ukrainian MP Aliona Hlivco’s brother joined the war efforts in Ukraine after hearing reports of Russian soldiers ‘raping and murdering civilians in villages north of Kyiv’. As a result of public information movements, others have also been doing their part in supporting Ukraine through private donations to NGOs and other aid providers. Direct donations from civilians have become a steady source of support for Ukraine’s cause in contrast to the fluctuating levels of aid provided by foreign governments. It is the inherent compassion within the population that is priceless in mobilising aid, no matter how small, towards resolving global issues.

PHOTO: Humanitarian aid delivery by Revival, Revival Foundation on Wikimedia Commons

However, such compassion is fragile.

Originally coined in the context of healthcare, compassion fatigue describes a phenomenon traditionally experienced by emergency care workers. It refers to the loss of ability to care for their patients caused by the constant exposure to suffering and pain. This process of dissociation often stems from experiencing shared pain, and is also known by many terms such as empathic distress, vicarious grief and vicarious trauma. The continual absorption of grief and distress is a primary cause of compassion fatigue. It slowly withers down a person’s capacity to process distressing emotions, creating a heavy emotional toll on their mental health and limiting empathetic behaviour as a psychological protective measure . 

Brad Bushman, a media researcher at Ohio State University in the US, described the experience of compassion fatigue as “a kind of emotional or attentional filtering” aimed to protect when pain becomes “too stressful or traumatic to cope with”. In the past, this term has only been studied and applied in the health context. Yet, a large percentage of the general public have begun to exhibit signs of detachment and helplessness characteristic of compassion fatigue. 

This leads to the question: why are symptoms traditionally associated with emergency care workers manifesting in the general population?

Compassion fatigue and the media

The emergence of 24/7 news has brought about an age of interconnectedness previously unseen with traditional forms of news media. The growing transition away from physical media such as daily newspapers to news channels and social media have allowed for updates by the minute. In the context of humanitarian aid, this has allowed for greater mobilisation than ever possible. People from across the world have been able to stay informed and contribute to the support of individuals experiencing harrowing ordeals. For example, it has been observed that when there is ‘1% increase of mentions in Ukrainian news of military activity, there is also a 0.028% rise in same-day donations  (roughly $2,966 AUD)’ to Come Back Alive — Ukraine’s largest NGO provider of military aid. 

However, the coverage of global crises can be a double-edged sword. The increased presentation of distressing content across the internet has contributed to a growing wave of compassion fatigue. It has become increasingly common for hourly news updates to report on mass deaths, tragedies and conflicts across the world caused by numerous crises. Destruction by fires in Europe or the deaths caused by wars in Gaza and Ukraine are threats that the nervous system has to process in very little time. Comparatively, in the past, distressing news was localised, and media on tragedy was limited to how fast information could travel or when physical media was printed on the day; as such, a person could process the information relatively easier as they had more time to process. Without 24-hour news and social media, individuals did not spend their emotional energy on crises across the world because they would not know of atrocities being committed.

In this age of media, many people report a sense of helplessness and detachment from the tragedies they witness in the news. As writer and poet Elisa Gabbert explained, her personal experiences in activism led to “a creeping psychic exhaustion”. Gabbert expressed how her rage began to feel “largely useless”, noting that “the news [was] still horrifying … but the physical feeling of horror [was] gone”. Her article referenced many other individuals experiencing a similar sense of “political paralysis”, recognising how common it is for people to feel ‘tired’ of fighting for a seemingly unattainable goal. Gabbert’s experience highlights the nuance of constant consumption. It is the fact that each hourly update keeps reminding each person that the pain and the suffering they cannot bear will continue regardless of any action they take. It is the constant exposure to demoralising information that attacks their resolve.

It is the inability to see a reason to act, and the realisation that there may be no point, which contributes to compassion fatigue.

PHOTO: Tired Activists Sleep Side By Side in the Sunlight, Alisdare Hickson on Wikimedia Commons

The distress caused by the consumption of negative news has had a noticeable impact on the emotional strength of the public. This is evident in a recent digital movement to become more intentional with the consumption of news, with some avoiding the news altogether to tackle their emotional fatigue. Since 2017, the percentage of people who sometimes or often avoid the news has increased from 29% to 40% across 50 countries. Interviews conducted by the ABC revealed a common thread of anxiety experienced by under-18s. Siena, aged 16, told the ABC the constant news updates about the war on Tiktok are ‘really scary’. Beena, aged 17, said that after years of watching the news ‘every single morning’ she stopped after everything started seeming ‘so sad’. These exceedingly common experiences are translating into a current and very pressing fear within many teens and young adults who will be transitioning to an age of responsibility in the coming years. 

Psychologist Lauren Zannettino explained that hopelessness within young people was emerging from the belief that they “don’t have the ability to change the injustice that [they’re] seeing”. She highlights an increasingly common form of compassion fatigue manifesting in people younger than 35, where individuals are unable to act to alleviate suffering, fostering a sense of helplessness and possible detachment for protection.

Furthermore, Director of the Minnesota Journalism Center, Benjamin Toff, studied this emerging movement of news avoidance and emphasised the adverse effects this may have on informed political engagement. Toff stressed the importance of journalism in ensuring the public can engage in informed political debates and expressed concerns on how news avoidance may “deepen social divides”. As such, it is evident that news avoidance and compassion fatigue will require a shift in approach towards the production of journalistic content. Balancing the need to ensure society is well-educated and informed on necessary issues while contending with the potential mental health effects of distressing news has already prompted news outlets to change strategies, with Swedish Newspaper Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) developing an app to transform the consumption of news into a more playful experience. 

Consequences of a detached and hopeless society

On a global scale, disconnecting from the news may have adverse effects on the mobilisation of humanitarian aid.

The COVID-19 Pandemic

By 2022, lockdowns had drastically increased online activity on a global scale. As regulations became stricter and COVID cases surged, news consumption increased. Among individuals anxious about the pandemic, Julian Burrett, a British marketing professional, elaborated on his decision to intentionally “unplug” after an “almost addiction” to the news during the pandemic. Similarly, former ABC journalist, Yasmin Jeffery, reflected on her news usage during the pandemic, claiming that, after a year of heavy consumption, the constant updates felt ‘more anxiety-inducing than anything else’ – an experience shared by many throughout the COVID-19 years.

Constant exposure to death and grief through traditional news sources and social media contributed to a rise in vicarious grief — grief felt by those who have not directly experienced loss — within the public. Individuals experiencing vicarious mourning with high exposure to media reported higher levels of depression and psychological stress than those with lower exposure to media. This indicated that exposure to constant reporting, while informative, could create an emotional burden on individuals to the point of emotional distress. Such consumption over the span of two years contributed to a rise in compassion fatigue cases. 

PHOTO: Social Distancing, Stuart Bailey on Pixabay

The Russian Invasion of Ukraine

The conflict between Russia and Ukraine has made evident the dynamic relationship between live news, compassion fatigue and its effects on humanitarian aid. Compassion in the public is necessary for the mobilisation of humanitarian aid during conflict and donations have been shown to increase proportionally with a rise in media coverage of the conflict. However, the prolonged nature of the conflict means constant coverage of similar themes — death, destruction, grief — increases the chances that consumers experience compassion fatigue and tune out of crisis updates. Assistant professor of communication studies at the Universidade Catolica Portuguesa, Jessica Roberts, described the common reactions to the tragedies occurring in Ukraine. “When I first heard about the atrocities it was horrifying, but then I heard about another town and my reaction was less extreme”, said Roberts. She highlighted how constant violent coverage and the realisation that it will continue to happen has contributed to a surge of detachment and fatigue in the general population. These self-protection measures are one of many factors causing harm to aid efforts by NGOs who rely on the informed public to be compassionate enough to continue supporting them. 

Looking ahead

The effects of compassion fatigue have ranged from the individual all the way to a global scale. Constant exposure to the issues across the world have brought about a sense of helplessness and vicarious grief — an emotional toll too large to translate into compassion. As many parts of the world begin to tune out, humanitarian aid has already started to pay the price. It is important to now find a way to balance consumption of negative news with appropriate downtime, staying informed while also protecting our mental health. Compassion fatigue is a natural response to overwhelming suffering. Recognising that taking care of our wellbeing will protect our capacity to support others can ensure that global issues continue to be addressed rather than ignored.