Protecting Your Mental Health as a Social Worker

I have be where this woman is at.  She looks tired, stressed, lost and confused and those are not good places to be.

I have met many social workers who are now on depression and anxiety medication as a result of their jobs.  They seem to be in an endless cycle of burnout and stress whereby their symptoms only get exasperated by not enough down time at work and bosses who either ignore the problem or don't care.

At any social work agency I have ever worked for, we have never had guest speakers, meetings or learning opportunities to discuss our mental health - even though things like compassion fatigue, burnout and post traumatic stress disorder effects many social workers on the front line.  Since social workers are part of the group of helping professionals they require special care just like their clients.  Without proper support and recognizing the inherent mental health risks associated with this field we are doing not only a disservice to ourselves, but also our co-workers, and clients when we are not performing at our best.

Very few agencies offer designated "mental health days" so social workers use their regular sick days for mental health issues i.e. like if they just can't get out of bed that day or they are experiencing an emotional crisis.  Imagine, as social workers we try and help the most needy of people and put our heart on the line for them everyday.  Then, when we come home we are expected to handle complex emotional relationships with friends and families.  Sometimes the expectations just feel too high.

Taking a stress leave is another option if your symptoms get worse enough where you can no longer do your day to day work.  However, we often worry about stigma in the office and feel guilty about overloading our co-workers with our files when we are gone.  And usually when we return there are twice as many things we have to deal with and correct than from before we left.

Many agencies, especially child welfare agencies have been running the same way for a long time.  Budgets only allow for so many workers so it means social workers are given ever increasing workloads, which is very precarious if you work in an emergency or crisis driven area (i.e. you get NO mental breaks).

Overall the workload can be so relentless that taking time even for a bathroom break can be a challenge.  Oftentimes social workers are given empty promises that the workload will get better soon but it doesn't, or if it does the workload only lessons a little until the next emergency.

So how do social workers cope with this?  Some concede that they are working in a flawed system whereby they will never be able to do the best work possible.  They ignore clients complains about a lack of services and they do not take it personally that they are rarely available.  If you are of the other social work group then it becomes crushing how few clients you feel that you actually have time to help, and then you begin to internalize these feelings.  And if you mention your depression or anxiety with other co-workers or supervisors who have been around for a long time at the agency, you will notice many of them have become jaded and are unsympathetic to your concerns.  The most sympathy and support you will likely receive will be from new grads or other new hires.

No one can take responsibility for your mental health but you.  If you notice that your job is having a considerable negative affect on your mental health, talk to your family and doctor about it.  Seeing a counselor might help with providing you with coping techniques, but if your stress is mostly caused by work then it might be time to look at another social work job within the agency, in another field of social work, or leave the field entirely before you have lost all of your mental health resiliency.