Strengths Perspective: How Social Work Students Use Mindfulness as a Self-Care Strategy

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I have enjoyed reading this article which is well structured and has a coherent argument. It has some helpful findings for students of social work and their educators.

I have a couple of minor suggestions:

it tends to speak to a US audience and that consideration should be given to making it more international 

you use strength's based in the title but strength and/or strengths in the article. This needs to be reviewed for consistency or an clear explanation as to the use of terminology.

Use of acronym MBSR is explained initially but then does not need further explanation 

You cite other research in blocks after a summary of their findings e.g. page 1,  line 40. Page 2 line 93. page 4 line 175. It is helpful to the reader if you can state what these people you are quoting are saying and do so individually. As it is currently written it is not possible to ascertain this at the moment.

Author Response

Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. Please find the detailed responses below and the corresponding revisions/corrections highlighted/in track changes in the re-submitted files.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Review report

Strength’s Perspective: How Social Work Students Use Mindfulness as a Self-Care Strategy 

Thanks for inviting me to review this manuscript. Social workers are exposed to a lot of stress and challenging situations, and there is a need for more knowledge about how effective self-care and stress management techniques could be developed and implemented in practice. I have some concerns about the quality of the paper, not least related to the methods used in the study and how they are reported in the paper. Below I have added some suggestions on how I think the manuscript could be improved.

Abstract

-         -  I think the aim of the study should be clearly stated in the abstract.

Introduction

-         -  The introduction is well referenced,  interesting and quite easy to follow. However, the mention of the COVID-19 pandemic in the first paragraph leads the reader to think that the study will focus challenges specifically related to the pandemic, which not is the case. It would e.g. be interesting to know the overall prevalence of common mental disorders or mental illness symptoms or stress among social work students, rather than figures on how the pandemic effected mental health among them. These figures are now reported under “Literature review” but could preferrable be presented in the introduction instead. Thus, I would recommend the authors to clarify the relevance of COVID-19 in relation to the study aims, alternatively remove this part from the introduction.

Literature review – mindfulness and social work practise

-          - This section is interesting and important but reads almost like a list of studies. I think that the flow of the text could be improved by synthesising and combining findings from these studies, rather than presenting each one of them separately.

Methods

-         -  To be able to evaluate the results of the study, the implemented four-week mindfulness program needs to be presented in much more detail. What did the online session include? What questions did the weekly writing reports include? And even more important, what kind of mindfulness exercises did the participants do on a weekly basis? How, and how much did the participants interact with each other (given the results, not least the themes “Caring Community”)? In the results, there are quotes referring to various techniques, but it is unclear if these were tought and recommended during the program, or if the participants developed their own techniques. The reader wants a detailed description of the program that was implemented, otherwise it is hard to understand and evaluate the results. In particular, one wants to know how sessions were designed to specifically address “stress management, strengthening personal strengths, self-care, and coping strategies” as stated in the aim of the study.

-         -  The design and conduction of the FGD(s?) also need further clarification. Was one or several FGDs conducted? What was raised in this FGD, what was the question in focus? How was it conducted, did all participants participate in the same FGD or were did divided into several groups? If so, how were they grouped to facilitate group interaction? Was the design of the FGD steered by preliminary results from the writing exercises? Please add more information about the FGDs, how they were designed, conducted, and used (including how they were documented, recorded and if they were transcribed before analysis?)

-        -   In addition, the analysis of the data needs to be described more in detail. It is not enough to refer to Braun and Clarke’s definition of Thematic analysis. Rather, the authors need to describe in detailed how they moved from text (?) to Themes. How did they follow the steps in TA, as described by Braun and Clarke? How was data coded?

Results

-        -   The aim of the study was to “examine the influence of a mindfulness-based stress reduction series with a focus on a strengths-based approach aimed at stress management, strengthening personal strengths, self-care, and coping strategies for social work students” (line 177 – 180). Thus, the reader expects the Themes to answer this aim. The themes presented in the result section are: 1. consistency and commitment, 2. affirmations and self-love, 3. caring community, 4. mindfulness strategies, 5. physical restoration, and 5. enrichment and learning. It is not crystal clear how these six themes respond to the aim. Rather, the Themes seem to respond to a much broader aim, i.e, to examine social work students' experiences with using mindfulness with a strengths-based approach (as stated on line 182). Thus I would recommend the authors to stick to this broader aim, and be consistent in how the aim is stated throughout the paper.

-        -   Please clarify what the GroupMe stands for. Was that the name of the program? Also, the participants refer to the GroupMe app, please clarify what that was and how it was used.

Discussion

-      -     The first sentence in the discussion, i.e. The mindfulness series provided awareness that students were able to learn new techniques to utilize in an online learning environment that promotes students’ well-being and self-awareness and reduces stress, is a valid statement based on the reported results.  However, the statement on line 350 - Improvements were found in students’ attention to gained self-awareness, continued learning of self-care practices, and consistency of implementing mindfulness techniques, seems harder to validate from the results. I do not think it is appropriate to state “improvements” when no base line measures on self-awareness etc. are available. Thus, I think the writers need to tone down this conclusion. Alternatively, if any base-line assessment were available, this must be clearly stated in the paper.

Implications, Limitations, and Future Research

-        -   The first two paragraphs under this heading reads a bit repetitive. I think the text could be shortened here without losing the main message.

Author Response

Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. Please find the detailed responses below and the corresponding revisions/corrections highlighted/in track changes in the re-submitted files.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf