The Challenges of Social Work Students amid COVID-19: Psychological Distress and Coping Strategies

Background and Purpose:

Social work students experience high levels of stress in demanding course work, financial burden, role strain, and exposure to client trauma and distress in the field internship. Their stressful situation makes them become academically challenged in facing COVID-19. The fear and uncertainty by the pandemic affects their psychological state. It is important to recognize how social work students experience psychological distress and how they develop coping strategies amid COVID-19. The research questions of this study are: (1) how does COVID-19 affect psychological distress of social work students?; and (2) how do social work students use coping strategies to deal with distress?

Methods:

The study employed a quantitative research method utilizing an online survey to examine how COVID-19 affects psychological distress of social work students and how they use coping strategies to deal with distress. BSW and MSW social work students (N=482) in the U.S. were recruited through an online survey for the study. The three instruments were used in this study: the participant demographic questionnaire, Brief COPE, and Hopkins Symptom Checklist-10. The participant demographic questionnaire is as follows: ethnicity, race, gender, age, marital status, religion, employment status, program type, number of credits, and field internship status. The ten-item Hopkins Symptom Checklist-10 (HSCL-10) was used to measure psychological distress and the 28-item Brief COPE to measure coping strategies such as avoidant coping and approach coping. Data was analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics software. Descriptive statistics was employed to present the perceived psychological distress levels of the students. Then, Pearson’s correlations and Regression analyses were conducted to examine the relationship between psychological distress and coping strategies.

Results:

Based on descriptive statistics, the trend for all age groups was that the number of reported symptoms, on average, decreased as someone aged into higher age groups. The result of a Pearson’s correlation between avoidant coping and psychological distress indicated a significant relationship. A regression analysis was used to investigate the influence of the avoidant subcategories and psychological distress. All other categories except for denial indicated significance at the p<.05 level. Self-blame indicated the strongest relationship with symptoms. Behavioral disengagement indicated the next strongest relationship with psychological distress. Substance use indicated the third strongest relationship with psychological distress. Lastly, self-distraction indicated the fourth strongest relationship with psychological symptoms. Regarding approach coping, for the categories that were significant, planning was found to have the strongest relationship with symptoms. Positive reframing had the next strongest relationship with symptoms. Active coping had the third strongest relationship with symptoms.

Conclusions and Implications:

The study contributes to acknowledge how COVID-19 affects psychological distress of social work students and how they use coping strategies to deal with distress. The study helps to better understand psychological distress and coping strategies of social work students amid COVID-19. Furthermore, the study helps to develop support systems for dealing with distress of social work students and teaching strategies for practicing positive coping methods.