Purpose: The purpose of this systematic review is to fill the gap in a critical understanding of peer-reviewed empirical research on self-care practices to identify structural, relational, and individual-level facilitators and barriers to self-care practices in social work.
Method: We followed the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis for this systematic review of peer-reviewed quantitative and qualitative empirical research articles focusing on self-care in social work among adult social work practitioners and students.
Results: Twenty-one articles related to empirical studies of self-care were identified in the systematic review process with samples of social work practitioners (n = 15), social work students (n = 3), and social work educators (n = 3).
Discussion: Social workers engaged in self-care practices are more likely to be healthy, work less, be White, and have higher socioeconomic professional status and privilege, indicating current conceptualizations of self-care may not be accessible and contextually and culturally relevant for many social workers.
Conclusion: Overwhelmingly, results indicated social workers reporting greater sociostructural, economic, professional, and physical health privilege engaged in more self-care. No articles directly assessed institutional factors that may drive distress among social workers and clients. Rather, self-care was framed as a personal responsibility without integration of feminized and racialized inequities in a sociopolitical and historical context. Such framings may replicate rather than redress unsustainable inequities experienced by social workers and clients.
Keywords: Self-care; compassion fatigue; self-compassion; social work.