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Emotional Stress In Social Work

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Emotional distress is an issue for social workers because they deal with emotional exhaustion, more caseloads than they can handle, and serious concerns about their patients. One reason emotional distress is an issue in social work is because social workers deal with emotional exhaustion. According to Marglin, burnout is the natural emotional exhaustion that results from spending forty or more hours per week giving to others and forgetting to take care of themselves (Marglin). Social workers give most of their time to their patients and not enough time to themselves. This causes them to lose sleep and it makes their health go down. They worry too much about the cases they have and that is also a result of emotional exhaustion, they will spend sleepless nights thinking about the children or adults they are dealing with and they think about the things that are being done. Often …show more content…

Study shows that Sixteen percent of social workers have more than 40 cases on the go, and 90% say high caseloads are affecting their ability to practice good social work (Smith). A poll of 600 social workers said that 82% of their caseloads have increased, 10% of children social workers have more than 40 cases on the go. Hundreds of social workers gave detailed comments on their caseloads, saying the sheer volume of work was affecting their health and practice (Smith). Workloads in social work are continually increasing in both adult and children social work, they are making cuts to the social work and this is causing extra pressure and stress for the social workers (Smith). On top of all the stress they have from emotional exhaustion the work is increasing and causing them more stress which is not good for the social workers, also most social work offices are making cuts to their pay and the expenses in the office which is also bringing stress to the

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