Professional News

The Shrinking World and the Growing Need for Social Workers

Frances Goddard, LCSW, BCD
Diane Harvey, LCSW

The bigger the world gets, the smaller it seems. This dichotomy of a shrinking world that is actually enlarging sounds odd, but this is what we mean by that phrase. As people’s environment expands, often by no choice of their own, the more anxiety producing it can become! What actually gets smaller is a person’s ability to feel comfortable in their quaint world of family, friends, work, and home. That once intimate environment is shrinking away. An article in the March 2020 Harper’s Bazaar quotes psychotherapist Akua L. Boateng as saying, “We are not only empathizing with the stress of a parent’s job loss or a child’s rough school year, but also with the distant experiences of mass shootings, natural disasters, and fires.” Social media and the growing ways that information and news are delivered to people bring those distant experiences right to everyone’s front door!

The growing world is creating cumulative outside stressors fueled by… 

If you receive the Social Work Advocates, check out our article “The Millennial Shift” in the December 2019-January 2020 issue

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