Abstract

To assess the relationship between job-related emotional exhaustion, workload demands, life satisfaction, emotional labor, alcohol consumption, and medication use of social workers employed in Portugal. A sample of 370 social workers from mainland Portugal, Madeira, and the Azores was obtained for this study. All members of the Social Work Professional Association as of July 2005 (N=1,260) were sent a 134-item mail survey that assessed professional roles, practice-related issues, and alcohol and drug use. In addition, the following measures were included: Job Satisfaction Survey, Job-Related Affective Well-Being Scale, Job-Related Emotional Exhaustion Scale, Quantitative Workload Inventory, Emotional Labor Scale, and the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule. The survey instrument was developed in American English, translated into Portuguese with the assistance of certified translators at the Portuguese Center of Social Work History and Research in Lisbon, Portugal, and back-translated to assure its clarity and accuracy. The response rate was 29.4%. Logistic regression was used to examine the predictors of alcohol/medication use, focusing on job-related emotional exhaustion, emotional labor, workload, and life satisfaction scales. Alcohol consumption in the last 12 months for female social workers (81%) was more than three times higher than the rate identified for females in the general population of Portugal (26%) during 1998/1999 (Marques-Vidal & Matias Dias, 2005). A high proportion of social workers reporting moderate emotional exhaustion (67%; p < 0.05) and moderate levels of deep acting-refocusing on the emotional labor scale (75%; p < 0.05) drank alcoholic beverages in the last 12 months. Those reporting high workload demands were less likely to be daily drinkers (OR = 0.43, p < 0.05, CI = 0.20-0.91). A similar proportion of social workers used tranquilizers (29%) and painkillers (31%) in the last 12 months. The use of tranquilizers and painkillers was associated with overall life satisfaction. Respondents who reported low overall life satisfaction were twice as likely to use tranquilizers (OR = 2.23, p < 0.05, CI = 1.08-4.62), and those who were less likely to report low overall job satisfaction drank heavily (OR = 0.36, p < 0.01, CI = 0.17-0.76). Findings indicated that social workers reporting low workload demands were daily drinkers and overall life satisfaction was associated with the use of tranquilizers and painkillers. Training programs for social workers are recommended to address how alcohol consumption and use of medications such as tranquilizers and painkillers may influence one’s reporting of job demands, burnout, styles of emotion management, and subjective assessments of life satisfaction.