A Mind-Body-Spirit Framework for Addressing Self-Care in Social Work Education

ABSTRACTDespite high rates of compassion stress within the field of social work and the growing acknowledgment that self-care is critically important to ethical social work practice and to the practitioner’s overall well-being, social work education has not yet adequately responded to the self-care and wellness needs of students and new professionals, nor has it fully prepared them for the stressful realities of social work practice. Self-care education is essential for student/practitioner success and necessitates innovative programmatic and curricular development. It also entails more discussion and explication of conceptual frameworks upon which self-care education will be designed and implemented. Given that self-care relates to individuals’ unique biopsychosocial needs, as well as their preferred methods of healing and cultural beliefs, this paper calls for a mind-body-spirit framework for self-care education. The need for such a framework is examined and a sample curriculum is presented and discussed.KEYWORDS: Stress-burnoutscholarship of teaching and learningvalues and ethics Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationFundingThe author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article