Depression in the Profession: Social Workers' Experiences and Perceptions

The experience of disabled and non-disabled students on professional practice placements in the United Kingdom

“…For those students with unseen impairments, a disclosure, once made, cannot be retracted and may subsequently impact on the rest of their university experience and, potentially, into the employment setting (e.g. Houghton, 2006;Riddell & Weedon, 2013;Stanley, Manthorpe & White, 2007). Disabled students can therefore face a difficult choice, particularly if the placement provider is considered a potential future employer.…”

“…The latter view may be related to the potential stigma attached to disclosing impairment in the social work profession which has been identified in relation to disclosure of mental health issues (Stanley, Manthorpe & White, 2007). In addition, previous research has suggested there can be an assumption in the social work profession that disabled people are more likely to be recipients than providers of social work support (Sapey, Turner & Orton, 2004), leading perhaps to the unacknowledged possibility that professionals in this field may be disabled.…”

Factors perceived by employees regarding their sick leave due to depression

“…Over the last few years, the models of Karasek [20] and Siegrist [21] have been studied by numerous teams around the world and the results clearly provide evidence for the pathological effect of harmful work conditions on workers' mental health [10,37,38]. For example, several studies in the literature mentioned the damaging consequences of a heavy workload on workers' mental health [11,12,18,20,39]. Moreover, the basic assumption of the JD-C [20] model is that psychosocial risk factors (i.e.…”

How Do “Mental Health Professionals” Who Are Also or Have Been “Mental Health Service Users” Construct Their Identities?

“…Studies using more traditional epistemologies have reported that professionals with service user experience encounter dilemmas (Berry, Hayward, & Chandler, 2011;Cain, 2000;Charlemagne-Odle, Harmon, & Maltby, 2014;Gilroy, Carroll, & Murra, 2001;Stanley, Manthrope, & White, 2007;van Erp, Hendriksen-Favier, & Boer, 2010). These include issues regarding self-disclosure, experiencing stigma, prejudice and discrimination, being accused of overidentification and boundary violation, having reduced energy, confidence and emotional presence, and a discrepancy between their personal identity and their professional role.…”