Social Worker Wellness Resources

By Jordin Frey

April 2023

Many jobs have high-stress levels that significantly impact a worker's wellness. Occupations such as police officers, firefighters, and doctors are demanding jobs where the health and welfare of people are at stake every day. Another job that takes a toll on individuals and is often overlooked is social work. Social workers regularly deal with the problems of individuals and families that can quickly become stressful and overwhelming. To live a healthy and happy life, social workers need to find a way to alleviate the stress they receive from their work.

Throughout each day, social workers can face any number of stressful situations. Typically, these professionals work with clients in the community facing personal issues. Clients could be families, individuals, or even children from any financial background. Social workers are advocates for these clients and help them work through their problems. However, helping their clients can come at a cost for the social worker. The stress of a client's circumstances can sometimes affect social workers and have an impact on their lives outside of work.

Even though taking on clients' problems is addressed in online social services school and other educational institutions, it can still affect their everyday life. Social workers need to be aware of their own health and wellness. If unchecked, stress can lead to high blood pressure, anxiety, diabetes, heart problems, and depression for social workers. Therefore, social workers must maintain a healthy lifestyle to combat it.

Medical professionals have offered several suggestions on how to control the effects of stress. Some include doing yoga to relax, trying meditation to put your mind at ease, getting more sleep to refresh your body, and becoming more physically active. Even going for a daily walk at lunchtime will help clear your mind and give you the needed physical activity to help fight the stressful situations of the day.

To help you maintain a healthy lifestyle, our online social services school has assembled a selection of wellness resources.

• Role of Social Work in Health Care System - This web page looks at the role of social work in the health care system.

• Managing Stress as a Social Worker - Stress is a huge problem with social workers and this article looks at ways to manage it.

• Burnout and Self-Care - The New Social Worker Magazine published this helpful article about burnout in the field and how workers can self-care.

• Social Work Self-Care Resources - This resource contains information on how social workers can remain healthy and well on the job.

• Mental Health and Wellness Resources - Several wellness resources are provided in this helpful article that can help with mental health issues.

• Social Wellness Toolkit - The National Institute of Health has published this guide to being well in everyday life.

• Self-Care Activities - In this article, you will find several helpful ideas on caring for yourself.

• Creative Self-Care Resources - A helpful page with information on self-care for groups and individuals.

• List of Self-Care Activities - If you are looking for self-care help, this fun article lists 50 activities you can use to fight work stress.

• Easy Self-Care Activities - This page provides workers with information and activities they can use to self-care at home or work.

• Practicing Self Care - On this page, you will find a listing of activities and worksheets that can help fight stress in the workplace.

• Self-Care Activities at Work - A helpful web page that provides several activities that can be done at work.

• Work-Life Balance - The U.S. Department of Commerce has created a page that looks at the issues of a healthy work-life balance and how you can reduce stress.

• Work-Life Balance Tips - This page from Healthline offers many useful tips on achieving a healthy balance between work and the rest of your life.

• Achieving a Work and Life Balance - On this page, you will find several ideas on how any worker can achieve a healthy work-life balance.

• How to Balance a Work and a Personal Life? - How to achieve success with a proper balance between work and your personal life.

• Stress at Work - A helpful web page that looks at the problems of stress at work and how to overcome health concerns.

• Workplace Stress - The American Institute of Stress has written a helpful page that looks at the concerns over stress in the workplace.

• Workplace Stress Relief - This page contains a selection of techniques to manage workplace stress.

• Work Burnout Signs - In this article, you will learn what work burnout is and what signs to look for to identify this work issue.

• Work Burnout - WebMD provides a helpful article that discusses the problem of work burnout and how to combat the problem.

• Information on Workplace Burnout - Web page about the causes, effects, and solutions for workplace burnout.

• Beating Burnout - The Harvard Business Review has listed many suggestions on how to beat burnout on the job.