When the Social Worker Has the Diagnosis: Why Lived Experience Isn’t a Liability
Why This Conversation Matters
In social work training, we are taught to value lived experience. We are encouraged to listen, to challenge stigma, and to understand people within the wider context of their lives. Lived experience is spoken about as a real strength when it belongs to service users. Yet when lived experience sits within the social worker, particularly in the form of a mental health diagnosis, something often changes.
The conversation becomes quieter, more careful and sometimes it stops altogether.
For students who are still figuring out what kind of social worker they want to be, this silence matters. It shapes how professionalism is understood and sends subtle messages about who feels acceptable, safe, or “cut out” for the job.
Professionalism and Emotional Expectations
Professionalism in social work is typically linked to good judgement, accountability, emotional regulation, and safe decision making. These expectations are obviously important; however, they’re sometimes tied to an unspoken belief that a good social worker should be emotionally straightforward or unaffected by difficulty.
Ultimately, this contradicts the reality of the work. Social work exists in spaces of complexity, distress, trauma, and uncertainty. Expecting practitioners to be psychologically uncomplicated does not reflect the nature of the role, or the people drawn to it for that matter.
A mental health diagnosis does not define someone’s values. Recovery based approaches focus on how people manage, adapt and live well with support, rather than on permanent limitation (Slade, 2009). As students, we are taught not to reduce people to labels. If that principle matters, it needs to apply within our own profession too.
Student Life, Pressure, and Silence
Social work education is demanding in ways that go far beyond assignments. Students juggle emotionally intense placements alongside lectures, coursework, jobs, caring responsibilities, and finances. Many are also managing their own wellbeing while learning how to support others.
In that context, the pressure to “hold it together” can fee relentless. When students worry that being open about mental health will be seen as weakness or risk, reflection can start to feel like something to perform rather than a space to be honest. Schön (1983) describes reflection as engaging openly with uncertainty and personal response. That becomes difficult when students feel they must protect how they are perceived rather than explore the reality of the role. The outcome is not safer practice, but a quieter, more isolated struggle.
Lived Experience as Insight, Not Identity
When properly supported, lived experience can bring valuable insight. Students who have had contact with mental health services often show strong awareness of power, language, and stigma. They may be especially sensitive to how assessments feel and how easily people can be defined by diagnosis rather than seen as whole individuals. This does not replace learning, supervision, or accountability, but it can deepen ethical awareness and empathy.
At the same time, lived experience does not automatically make someone a better social worker, just as a diagnosis does not disqualify them. What matters is how someone practises, reflects, sets boundaries, and takes responsibility, not the presence or absence of a label.
Supervision, Safety, and Living Our Values
Supervision is often described as a safe and reflective space, but for students this can feel complicated. Power dynamics on placement can make disclosure feel risky. Choice is key. No student should ever feel pressured to share personal information. However, cultures where support feels dependent on silence sit uneasily with social work values.
The BASW Code of Ethics (2021) commits the profession to dignity, worth, and anti-oppressive practice. Applying those values inwardly, within education and training spaces, is part of practising what we teach others.
It is also important to recognise that students are not expected to navigate these challenges alone. Support is available through BASW, including the Professional Support Service, which offers confidential emotional and wellbeing support, and Advice and Representation (A&R), which provides guidance where students or practitioners are facing professional or employment-related concerns. Making these supports visible is one practical way the profession can align its values with action.
Looking Forward
Student social workers are not only learning skills, we are shaping the future culture of the profession. Creating space for honest, respectful conversations about practitioner mental health does not weaken social work, it bolsters it by encouraging reflection, early support, and consistency between theory and practice.
Seeing social workers as more than their diagnoses is not a radical idea, it is simply living out the values we already claim to hold.
