According to the 2020 United Nations (UN) Global Happiness Report, Koreans' happiness index is still at the bottom when compared to other OECD countries. This result suggests that in the rapidly developing modern society with the 4th Industrial Revolu...
According to the 2020 United Nations (UN) Global Happiness Report, Koreans' happiness index is still at the bottom when compared to other OECD countries. This result suggests that in the rapidly developing modern society with the 4th Industrial Revolution, more attention is being demanded in fields that cannot be replaced by machinery, and overall consideration of the needs, roles, and happiness of human service workers is necessary.
Social workers are one of the professions most closely related to human happiness, and since social workers' happiness affects the qualitative level of happiness of those who receive social welfare services, it is necessary to pay attention to the happiness of social workers themselves. Especially, the happiness of psychiatric social workers who work for the mental health of the public is even more important.
Therefore, this study defined 'subjective well-being(SWB)', including Hedonia, which refers to the state of temporary and immediate joy or satisfaction experienced by psychiatric social workers while performing their duties, and Eudemonia, which refers to the value and reward of work.
On the other hand, the mental health practice field in Korea has a structure and conditions in which it is difficult for psychiatric social workers to fully demonstrate their unique expertise. In addition, psychiatric social workers experience serious job stress because they are being asked for expertise based on roles that overlap with other professionals in mental health fields rather than securing their own independent expertise.
Improving these structural problems is a very difficult process in reality, and there is a limit for psychiatric social workers to expect external force or organization to solve this problem in a complex and overloaded work environment.
Therefore, it is necessary to find ways to overcome these difficulties at an individual level.
In this study, resilience is chosen as an important personal variable that helps to overcome the negative effects of job stress internally, and whether resilience has a mediating effect or a moderating effect in the relationship between job stress and subjective well-being is examined.
The subjects of this study are 205 psychiatric social workers working in mental health-related agencies nationwide (psychiatric hospital, mental health welfare centers, mental rehabilitation facilities, mental care facilities, suicide prevention centers, addiction management centers, public institutions). The data collected through the survey was analyzed through the SPSS 22.0 program.
The research results are as follows.
First, the differences in demographic characteristics, job stress, resilience, and subjective well-being of the subjects were examined. In terms of job stress, there were no significant differences based on demographic characteristics. Statistical differences were observed in the analysis of resilience based on qualification level, mental health career, type of work organization, and annual income. The analysis of subjective well-being indicated that there was a statistically significant difference based on the type of work organization.
Second, the result of correlation analyses indicated that there was no significant correlation between job stress and subjective well-being and that there was a significant positive correlation between qualification grade and resilience. Also, it was found that there was a significant negative correlation between resilience and subjective well-being and that resilience has significant positive correlations with subjective well-being.
Third, it was proved statistically significant that resilience had a partial mediating effect in the relationship between job stress and subjective well-being.
Fourth, resilience was not statistically significant in the moderating effect in the relationship between job stress and subjective well-being.
The results of this study suggested that a more comprehensive intervention is necessary for the future such as a program for improving resilience and subjective well-being, and education and support at the institutional level as a way to overcome psychiatric social workers' serious job stress.