Social-Work Students Wellbeing: A Literature Review

Studying wellbeing represent a dynamic mission, especially when it comes to a specific category of population – as students, because the effects of a low level of wellbeing are not visible only on short term and – hence, if there are no investment in improvements, can influence academic achievement, transition to adulthood, and labor market. In this paper we provide a literature review on social work students’ wellbeing research findings over the last decade, by analyzing 15 articles focused mainly or exclusively on social work student’s wellbeing, from two databases: Web of Science Core Collection and Scopus. Considering – as a personal observation, that is a relatively lack of literature based on this topic, our aim is to provide a sum of recentlyempirical insights about how the social work students’ wellbeing is researched in and what are the main findings discussed in these studies. We observed an emergent growth of interest in the last years in studying social work students’ wellbeing. All three dimensions reported in our analysis, related on social work curriculum, supportive programs and on the level of engagement are strongly interconnected and could be transposed into suitable educational policies. As we noticed from a broader view, the overall wellbeing of social work students is subsequently linked with the increasing of specific aspects: mental and physical health, emotional intelligence, resilience, self-awareness, self-fulfilment, self-compassion and self-esteem, supportive relationships, empathic concern, social, educational, professional and psychological competencies, reflective skills, satisfaction with life, academic integration and retention etc.


Keywords: wellbeing, social-work, students, literature review, education