| Because social workers see vulnerable clients and often work under difficult conditions, and because they provide more mental health treatment than any other profession, it is important to know the degree to which these providers' professional practice might be impaired by their own alcohol and other drug (AOD) use and mental health problems. Other disciplines, prompted by concern for their colleagues and protection of their clients, have conducted considerable research on professional impairment, including the prevalence of AOD use and mental health concerns among their practitioners and the correlates of these kinds of distress. They have explored how distress can lead to impaired work performance, and have formulated policy and practice standards in response to the empirical evidence. Social work, however, has addressed the issue of impairment in a cursory fashion that is not evidence-based.;This study collected information about the extent of AOD use, depression, and burnout among social workers, determined demographic and other correlates of this distress (e.g. personal and work-related variables, caregiver role identity), and explored the degree to which AOD use, depression and burnout negatively affect professional practice (i.e. impairment). One thousand members of the North Carolina Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers were anonymously surveyed by mail, and 751 provided usable responses. Conservatively, 12% were at risk for alcohol and other drug abuse, 22% reported current depression, and 27% reported current burnout. Lifetime rates were 60% for depression and 75% for burnout, and 52% reported some kind of professional impairment as a result of their distress. Bivariate and regression analyses identified a variety of variables associated with distress and impairment, including income, trauma history, personal characteristics, caregiver role identity, and work-related stress, resources, and experience.;The findings confirmed that social workers are distressed, and that this distress negatively affects their work. The data can be utilized to inform individual interventions, program-level interventions such as Colleague Assistance Programs, workplace policy, and curricula for schools of Social Work. The data collected will be used as the foundation for an NIH proposal for a national survey of impairment in social workers. |
