Page 96 - GHES-2-3

Global Health Economics and
Sustainability

ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE
Multidimensional perceived social support: A

predictor of fatigue and quality of life in Greek
social workers

Paraskevi Theofilou* and Stavroula Malkopoulou

School of Social Sciences, Hellenic Open University, Patra, Greece

Abstract

The present study focuses on the investigation of fatigue, social support, and
quality of life that characterizes social workers. A total of 400 social workers with an
average age of 39.05 years took part in the research. Most of the recruited subjects
were women, single, residents of cities with a population of more than 100,000, and
health-care workers. The participants were asked to answer online questionnaires
(Fatigue Assessment Scale for fatigue, Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social
Support for Social Support, and General Health Questionnaire 28 for quality of life).
From the analysis of the data, it was found that the social workers suffered from
low levels of fatigue. Meanwhile, the occurrence of negative symptoms among the
subjects was not frequent, with physical symptoms appearing more often than the
Academic editor:
Mihajlo Jakovljevic M.D. Ph.D. MAE rest. The study also found that the participants received a high level of support from
their environment and more so from their significant others. In conclusion, there is
*Corresponding author:
Paraskevi Theofilou a strong relationship between perceived social support with fatigue level and the
(theofilou.paraskevi@ac.eap.gr) quality of life of social workers.
Citation: Theofilou, P. &
Malkopoulou, S. (2024).
Multidimensional perceived social Keywords: Social workers; Social support; Fatigue; Quality of life
support: A predictor of fatigue
and quality of life in Greek social
workers. Global Health Econ
Sustain, 2(3):3039. 1. Introduction
https://doi.org/10.36922/ghes.3039
Received: February 28, 2024 Social work is regarded as one of the highly stressful occupations, characterized by
frequent yet painful dealings and communications with other people in multiple
Accepted: May 20, 2024
situations (Stanley & Bhuvaneswari, 2016). It has been reported that significant sources of
Published Online: July 31, 2024 job-related stress experienced by social workers include extreme workload, role conflict,
Copyright: © 2024 Author(s). overtime, work dilemmas, the need to address unmet personal expectations, and the
This is an Open-Access article public’s negative perception of this profession (Storey & Billingham, 2010). However,
distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution in addition to the above stressors, insufficient support and lack of understanding from
License, permitting distribution, the supervisor and colleagues can also give rise to occupational stress and burnout
and reproduction in any medium, symptoms (Solomonidou & Katsounari, 2022).
provided the original work is
properly cited. According to the relevant literature, high levels of stress in social workers working in
Publisher’s Note: AccScience Western countries are responsible for the high levels of illness, depression, and burnout
Publishing remains neutral with (Stanley & Sebastine, 2023). Ravalier (2019) found that the interaction between high
regard to jurisdictional claims in
published maps and institutional demands, low levels of control, and absence of administrative support are related to
affiliations. the stress of social workers and its effects. Other factors related to the occurrence of

Volume 2 Issue 3 (2024) 1 https://doi.org/10.36922/ghes.3039