Social work is a demanding profession where social workers must demonstrate empathy, compassion and patience. For social workers to adequately face the risks of this profession, it is necessary to develop appropriate self-care techniques. With appropriate support, they can develop these already during their studies in social work. With the recognition of the risks of support and assistance professions, self-care has already become a topic included in educational programs in some parts of the world. Mental health is accompanied by hardships that are a part of each of us. The period of youth is a stressful time for students, full of changes and risks that can lead to hardships. Distress can be alleviated and improved by practising self-care techniques. There are many different techniques of self-care, which can be divided into physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual and professional self-care techniques. These types of techniques can be closely intertwined. Self-care techniques are not universal, so the use of the technique depends on the wishes, needs and experiences of individuals.
In the theoretical part of the thesis, I presented the topic of mental health with an emphasis on the definition of mental health and a description of mental health and the hardships experienced by the student population. I continued with the topic of self-care and presented it in the context of support and help professions and in the context of education. The topic of self-care techniques followed, where I briefly presented some of the most known and used self-care techniques.
In my thesis, I focused on researching self-care techniques that students of social work use to cope with their difficulties. I conducted qualitative research, and I collected data using the semi-structured interview method. I was interested in how students define mental health, what difficulties they face, what self-care techniques they use, where they get knowledge about self-care techniques, and what is the position of the Faculty of Social Work in developing self-care techniques among students. I found that students rate their mental health as good, with occasional periods of distress. Studying social work is a big hardship for them. Stress is relieved primarily by movement and socializing. Self-care techniques are mostly learned online. The students highlight the lack of self-care content during their social work studies at the Faculty of Social Work, University of Ljubljana. The results of the research contain insight into the use of self-care techniques among students, and thus also a good basis for introducing the content of self-care into the subjects of social work studies at the Faculty of Social Work.
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