Troubling/trouble in the academy: posttraumatic stress disorder and sexual abuse research

Abstract

The potential and actual impact of traumatic research work on researchers has been of focus in academic literature for at least the past 30 years (Alexander et al., Violence and Victims, 4(1), 57-62, 1989; Bahn and Weatherill, Qualitative Research, 13(1), 19-35, 2012; Coles et al., Violence Against Women, 20(1), 95-117, 2014; Coles and Mudaly, Child Abuse Review, 19, 56-69, 2010; Connolly and Reilly, Qualitative Inquiry, 13(4): 522-540, 2007; McCosker et al., Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 2(1): 1-13, 2001). This period of time—over 30 years ago—is approximately same age I was when I commenced writing this paper as a result of my direct experience with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a consequence of academic research. For the entirety of my life, researchers have been writing their accounts of trauma, and yet it is an experience that I, and many others, still endure. In this piece, an autoethnographic account is used to explore my diagnosis of PTSD as a consequence of involvement on an academic project examining particular aspects of sexual abuse. In doing so, I examine how PTSD is approached and addressed within the academy, the serious impact that working with traumatic material can have, and suggest a number of approaches that can be considered to address this. These include outlining how we can plan for trauma in research, how considerations of trauma should be built into institutional review boards and ethics applications, and how we can best understand and address the unfair impact that trauma has on fixed-term and casual staff members.