End of Year Review 2024

By Richard Devine, Consultant Social Worker | Visiting Researcher at Cambridge University | Trainer, Speaker, and Author of Messy Social Work

Mental health

Last year’s “end-of-year review” remains half-written and unpublished. I had completed this for the past three years, but something got in the way.

That something was depression.

It began a couple of months before the end of 2023.

It took me two months to fully acknowledge it.

At first, I attributed it to a passing phase. I thought I just needed more rest, so I rested. I thought I needed to work less, so I worked less. I thought I needed to spend more time with family and friends, so I tried to connect.

But it did not pass.

Eventually, I had to admit the truth: I felt deeply sad, confused, and unable to experience contentment—despite having a life I truly love. A wonderful family, a home, and a job I’ve always been passionate about.

I felt frustrated that my experience of depression was making me appear unappreciative or ungrateful for the life I had.

Fortunately, it eventually lifted in February 2024.

It left in the same unexpected way it had arrived, and I couldn’t identify anything specific in my life that would warrant such intensely challenging feelings.

Several months later, it returned: the profound, unmovable sadness, the sense of futility, the heaviness and lethargy, the strong desire to retreat from the world, and the inability to experience joy or peace.

The sadness in depression is unlike ordinary sadness. It isn’t fleeting, or tied to an event; instead, it feels like a deep ache in the bones, a heaviness that seeps into the very core of my being.

It is a sadness without boundaries, no clear beginning or end, and is weight that reshapes how I experience the world.

All of this is accompanied by an ego that offered a constant stream of unhelpful internal dialogue: “You’re weak,” “Don’t be so pathetic,” “What have you got to complain about?” “Better not tell anyone about this, it’s embarrassing,” “Don’t you realize how lucky you are?” “Can’t you just get over this?”

This is an excerpt from my journal at the time:

Lately, I have been feeling the creeping in again of depression. I have been trying to deny the experience for the last week or so, reluctant to accept, that once again, for no discernible reason I am feeling this way. It is a trap of the mind, but one that is so compelling, all-encompassing and overwhelming that the distortion feels so unbelievably real. I can even write this now, and in a short time, still find my self deceived by its veracity and realness. I suppose I didn’t want to accept defeat, even though I know that last time acceptance was a key component to overcoming or transcending the depression.

Unlike the previous episode, I was able to identify the symptoms within a week or so.

I decided to see what would happen if I treated depression as a symptom, a signal that something was malfunctioning and warranted attention.

Swiss born, British author and philosopher, Alain de Bottom’s words struck a chord with me, ‘a breakdown is a real-albeit inarticulate-bid for health and self-knowledge…an attempt to dislodge us from the status quo’.

Unlike last time, I was much more proactive in seeking a resolution. I did the one thing that depression doesn’t want you to do…talk about it with others.

By speaking with various people, including my family and close friends, I took the following steps.

First, I contacted my GP and was prescribed antidepressants. This wasn’t an easy decision; in fact, it was rather painful.

I had developed a dim view of antidepressant medication after reading Johann Hari’s Lost Connections.

Hari surveyed the research and spoke to leading experts across the globe, and argued persuasively that the chemical imbalance theory of depression was evidentially unfounded.

He also discovered in his research that pharmaceutical company-funded studies had inflated the positive effects of antidepressants. Furthermore, many studies overlooked or minimized the adverse side effects, of which there are many.

I also thought it was a form of cheating—covering up the symptom instead of addressing the underlying issue.

I felt like a failure.

However, unable to identify anything obvious in my life that could explain the feeling, and after doing everything in my power to maintain my wellbeing—such as good sleep hygiene, exercise, healthy eating, meditation, journaling, and daily cold showers—I felt I had nothing to lose.

I was reminded of a phrase I learned from Alcoholics Anonymous: “contempt prior to investigation.”

The initial side effects were uncomfortable—a mild headache, nausea, and sleeplessness—but they were also a strange relief, a distraction from the depression itself.

Over time, the medication began to work. It didn’t fix everything, but it took the edge off the sadness and, unexpectedly, eased my social anxiety.

I don’t know the scientific explanation for how antidepressants work, but my experience was that they dampened negative feelings, including depression and anxiety.

I didn’t realise how much energy I had been expending in every social interaction, constantly analysing, monitoring, and evaluating myself.

“Give eye contact—that’s good. Now look away, don’t look too long, but go back again.”

“That’s a funny comment she said. Now is a good time to smile and laugh.”

“Is my body language open enough? Maybe I should stand more toward her, but not too close.”

“Oh no, why did I say that? Hopefully, she won’t notice.”

“now seems like a natural ending, wait, not just yet, oh no, yep, now! Don’t forget to smile as you leave”

And breathe! The two-minute interaction with the fellow dog walker is over.

For the first time, I understood why I found social interactions so tiring.

On reflection, social anxiety functioned self-protectively when I was growing up. My mum’s depression and dad’s substance misuse made them unpredictable.

As a result, I became hyper-vigilant and attuned to their changing moods so I could adjust how I interacted with them to avoid being hurt or rejected.

This became ingrained and unconscious. Without realising, I applied this to all my relationships, even 20 years later as an adult.

I didn’t learn how to engage in reciprocally rewarding relationships. I was primed to anticipate and defend against rejection, one of the most painful and distressing human experiences.

I turned social interactions into a task: do and say whatever pleases the other, and avoid saying or doing anything that evokes a negative reaction (i.e., rejection).

This is what allowed me to stay connected to my parents at a time when I depended on them for my survival.

However, this same strategy prevented me from truly connecting with others, as I never felt I could relax and be myself.

The medication muted these thoughts and feelings, giving me the space to recognise them as habitual patterns of thoughts and feelings rather than truths.

When I stopped the medication, the thoughts and feelings returned, but I had gained an invaluable perspective: these patterns, once protective, no longer served me, and I could now challenge their truthfulness.

I also started therapy through my workplace’s Employee Assistance Programme.

In a meditation class I attended, I told the group I was feeling depressed.

One of the other members said something I can’t remember, but I do recall that instead of using the word “depression”, he used “grief and sadness.”

That made me reflect on what I was grieving.

Grief is often thought of in specific ways, such as when you lose a loved one. But you can grieve for the loss of:

• your childhood (if you experienced adversity).
• a relationship.
• a particular time in your life.
• an opportunity.
• an aspect of your identity.

There are many forms of grief.

This opened an inquiry into my relationship with key people in my life, especially with those growing up and in my early adulthood.

I realised that I had a lot of strong, unprocessed feelings, that I had put aside, thinking there was no point in delving into them when my life had moved on so much.

Accessing therapy provide space and permission for me to acknowledge, bring forth and process some of these feelings.

Alongside taking these actions I found, strangely, there were some lessons from feeling depressed.

Depression has a way of revealing truths that can feel stark and undeniable.

When I’m in it, I see clearly the futility of so much—material success, financial gain, even reputation. None of it seems to matter.

Life stripped of self-generated meaning is a period of being alive followed by death, forever. And everything you’ve done, no matter how substantial or important, will be forgotten and even if it isn’t forgotten, you’re not there to know whether it is or isn’t.  

None of it meant anything. Not on a deep, fundamental level.

But depression didn’t stop there. It turned that truth into a weapon, wielding it against me.

What might otherwise be a liberating insight—letting go of external pursuits—becomes something darker: a narrative of futility that seeks to pull me under.

It starts to make think life is pointless.

And critically, it convinces me there is no point in taking any action because it won’t change anything, which is perhaps the most dangerous lie.

Therefore, while there may be some truth in what depression showed me, it’s not the whole truth.

The challenge is to recognise the partial truth it offers—If none of those things matter, what does?

The other benefit was that I was forced to slow down and retreat from the world.

I am predisposed to workaholism; I love my job and feel driven to do it as well as I can. I also enjoy learning, reading, and writing, so I do additional work outside of my job.

I am guilty of viewing myself based on my productivity, and anything outside of being ‘productive’ can feel like a misuse of time. Underpinning this is a critical and judgmental inner voice.

However, with depression, I found minor tasks overwhelming. I felt physically wounded if I received an e-mail that required a response or necessitated me to do something.

Therefore, I couldn’t work anything other than my contractual hours.

This freed up a lot of time in the evenings and weekends to watch television with my wife (which we rarely do), spend time with my son, and see friends on the weekend.

It was nice to give myself permission to let go of the unrelenting high standards I always place upon myself— and the permanent sense of dissatisfaction from feeling like, no matter how much I get done, I could have done more.

A few months after it reappeared, the depression lifted. I don’t know whether it will return or not.

I suspect it will, but I don’t want to project too much into an imaginary future.

I’ve learned that my mind is not to be trusted when it comes to making predictions. It’s way too overconfident, if not delusional, about its sense of certainty despite being rarely accurate.

For now, I am content. And for that, I am truly grateful.

Professional

It was during this time of depression that I also reevaluated the work I was doing. For the first time, I questioned whether I still wanted to work directly with children and families.

I grew up with my dad using drugs and alcohol, in and out of rehab, until he died when I was 16. My mum suffered from depression and chronic fatigue syndrome. I entered social work because of these experiences.

For the last 14 years, I’ve spent 40-50 hours a week with children, parents, and families in their most intimate spaces—their homes and communities. If I’m not with them directly, I’m writing about their lives and experiences in assessments and reports.

As a result of my upbringing, I also struggled with addiction and self-esteem issues that plagued much of my adult life. My journey of learning to understand and support others has been intrinsically linked to discovering and understanding myself.

This work has mattered to me, both personally and professionally.

I have been sustained by the belief that we can help parents—and, in turn, their children—if we have the right mental models to understand their difficulties.

Mental models that facilitate compassion, even when working with individuals who can be antagonistic to our involvement.

And I have been obsessed with finding the proper support that is suited to their needs.

In this endeavour, I am proud of some of the developments that have been made in BANES, including:

• Providing psychological therapy to parents
• Setting up a Peer Parental Advocacy Service.
• Trialing long-term support for parents, resulting in the development of Fostering Families.
• Residential treatment for parents with addiction issues.

These initiatives reflect my commitment to addressing systemic issues while remaining rooted to the realities of local authority social work.

But they also reflect the extent and limit of my knowledge of how to support families outside of the typical, established ways of helping in the current system.  In others words, I’ve ran out of ideas.

I am also proud of staying close to practice, having spent seven years as a case-holding social worker and another seven years as a parenting assessment social worker. I have consciously chosen not to move into management or senior roles.

Much of what I write about in this blog, share through various trainings, and explore in my forthcoming book focuses on issues related to frontline practice.

In many ways, I believe the most dominant and essential aspects of social work practice are often the most neglected.

Over the past 14 years, I have worked to master these core skills. The 10,000 hours Malcolm Gladwell writes about.

My approach has been developed from the ground up, rooted in practice and shaped by the system itself.

The skills, practices, and voices of frontline practitioners are invaluable and deserve to be cherished, yet I feel they are often overlooked.

Instead, ‘innovation’, practice models, and policy developments are shaped by individuals, academics, or organisations whose connection to frontline practice is distant or non-existent.

I’ve lost count of the times I’ve heard academics or senior leaders say, “Social workers just need to be kind.” Of course!

I’m confident almost everyone agrees with that.

But being “kind” is far from simple when a parent is yelling at you to “get the fuck out of my house” while standing over you in a threatening manner.

At the same time, I’m not in favour of pathologising parents. There is always a context to people’s behaviour, and I think it’s important to have ideas that help us understand that context.

Nor am I against the influence of outsiders, or experienced social work leaders and academics per se; in fact, I am appreciative of most of it, but there does appear to be an imbalance (or a lack of collaboration).  

Professor Andrew Turnell (2006) in his dissertation, Enacting the Interpretive Turn, writes:

 While so much is expected of the statutory social worker, their lived experiences, their knowledges and their practice wisdom is almost entirely overlooked by researchers, academics and the institutions they work with. More than this, when attention is directed toward the frontline practitioners they are typically framed as part of the problem of the child protection enterprise (p.23).

I would contend that as far as the formal literature goes the voice and lived experience of the frontline practitioner is the most marginalised voice in the whole institutional child protection enterprise (p.51-52)

Turnell’s observation resonate deeply with my experiences and reinforce the need to amplify the voices of those directly involved with practice.

I have found that although the knowledge, theory, and policy landscape constantly evolve, making it difficult to keep abreast of it, there are some unchanging elements that exist in our role as child protection social workers.

Since the inception of child protection in the late 19^th and early 20^th century (see ‘Protecting Children’ in Time by Harry Ferguson), social workers have needed to:

• Build relationship with parents who, more often than not, don’t want help, especially from a social worker.
• Help parents suffering with addiction issues, mental health, violence or other challenges.
• Support parents to change
• Connect with children and understand their lived experience
• Analyse a wide array of information to form an analysis and plan of support
• Make difficult decisions (and when necessary, decide to secure children’s safety by placing them in alternative care)

These enduring responsibilities are the bedrock of social work, requiring skill, tenacity and empathy.

In my opinion, these are the ‘nuts and bolts’ of social work – today, tomorrow and into the foreseeable future. It is these unchanging elements that social workers, ironically, don’t get sufficient support with.

So, I am committed to sharing what I have learned in those areas.

However, I now want to step back from front-facing social work and working directly with children and families.

Much of my life has been about living through, making sense of, supporting others with, and protecting children from issues that cause harm. Issues like poverty, addiction, trauma, violence, sexual abuse and mental ill health, to name a few.

For the time being, I don’t want to be so intimately connected to that.

Messy Social Work

I have already started to step back. Earlier this year, I decided to reduce my hours.   

This was because I was beginning to pick up a lot of independent work and struggled to manage the additional work on top of the day job.

I have been fortunate to be involved with some exciting work in 2024, including:

• Designing and delivering a training course with Dr Julie Wilkinson from Research in Practice on direct work with children. The practice guide comes out in 2025.
• I recorded a podcast with Susan Ridpath from Research in Practice and Donald Forrester (also due out early 2025).
• I delivered the BASW masterclass series (which I have updated and improved for 2025).
• I collaborated with Tim Fisher through Relational Activism, delivering keynotes at Bath University and Think Ahead in Middlesex (see below pics). 

The advantage of doing independent work like this can be financial.

But also, you get to do more creative and, sometimes, more rewarding work than you would typically do otherwise.

I have, however, learned about the downside of working independently.

Firstly, the pay isn’t as much as it appears on the face of it. For example, imagine you get paid £500 to speak at an event for an hour.

Sounds fantastic, doesn’t it?

Except, you must be there the whole day, sometimes driving up the night before, so you might be out of the house for over 24 hours. You spend a day or two preparing the presentation. You might attend a couple of meetings with the organisers leading up to the event. Then, of course, you must pay tax on what you earn.

To add to that, sometimes it takes several weeks to get paid. So, you do a piece of work in December, imagining you will get paid that month to help see you through, but it doesn’t come through until February.

It would be a lot to do that full-time.

In my role, I have access to an office, sickness pay, annual leave, carers leave, and a pension and a whole host of other benefits (like access to counselling, for example).

Therefore, it isn’t just your salary that you must consider when transitioning into independent work.

I am not complaining about this. Just sharing what I have learned.

In addition to the independent work, I have written a book that will be released on 19^th May 2025.

I am very excited about this, and I have recently been provided a copy of the likely front cover:

It is available for pre-order now (for reasons I don’t fully understand, pre-orders can make a big difference so any support on this front would be hugely appreciated).

I haven’t been able to blog much this year. I have, however, picked this up again in the final stretch of 2024, and I have released the following blogs:

1. How to write an analysis (254 views)
2. 4 Lessons on Writing Online for Social Workers: How It Can Sharpen Your Social Work Skills and Open Doors (Including a Possible Book Deal!) (293 views)
3. How to assess capacity to change (132 views)

Overall, my blog has had more views this year than the previous years. That is the best thing about writing online. It remains available as a resource for others.

I have a lot of blogs I would like to write, but alas, I don’t have enough time! And I don’t have the desire to work excessively long hours to produce them.

Finally, I have collaborated extensively with Tim Fisher this year. In previous years, we delivered free webinars three or four times a year. We began noticing a declining interest in webinars, so we diverted our attention to the podcast.

The podcast has been hugely rewarding, personally and professionally. I set up the podcast last year and managed to do 22 episodes, but doing it alone was hard work.

Collaborating with Tim, and my friends at Relational Activism (huge props to the wonderfully optimistic, encouraging and inspiring, Kar-Man) has transformed it into something manageable, sustainable and way more fun.

In addition to the podcast, we have a column in the Professional Social Work Magazine, called Social Work Compass.  

What’s next?

In past years, I’ve set goals or had clear ideas about what I wanted to achieve. This year, however, I don’t feel inclined to do so.

In Man’s Search for Meaning, Carl Jung (1933) discusses ‘the stages of life.’ He describes a transition period between the ages of thirty-five and forty, noting that it is “not a conscious and striking change; it is rather a matter of indirect signs of change which seems to take its rise from the unconscious” (p.107).

Up until this stage, much of adult life is about establishing oneself in the world in practical ways. This often involves a preoccupation with status, material possessions, wealth, and reputation, as well as building a family and raising children.

It’s a phase where we focus on making ourselves useful.

‘Achievement, usefulness and so forth are ideals which appear to guide us out of the confusion of crowding problems. They may be our lode-stars in the adventure of extending and solidifying our psychic-experiences-they may help us in striking our roots in the world. But they cannot guide us in the development of that wider consciousness to which we give the name of culture’ (p.105).

Jung compares this stage of adult life to the rising sun in the morning, where both the sun and ourselves expand outward, reaching into the world and emitting our light.

 By noon, the descent begins. The sun starts to wane, and the driving force of the morning shifts, requiring something entirely different in the afternoon and evening.

In essence, what serves us during the first half of adulthood may no longer serve us in the second. Failing to recognise, adapt, and integrate this shift can lead to mental anguish.

This resonates deeply with me. The motivations that once drove me to establish myself, seek recognition, and achieve wealth or success are no longer as compelling.

Instead, new ideals are emerging: inner peace, contentment, love, and an open-hearted approach to life.

Although these are ideals that I have always valued, the striving to establish myself has come at the expense of them.

However, in the last year or two, it feels that these two versions (morning v afternoon) have been competing with one another (and maybe, contributed to my depression).

For example, I have spent a large part of this year feeling unable to compel myself to work excessively long hours like I have been able to in the past, and berating myself for turning weak, lazy or undisciplined.

But part of it is because I have been focused on well-being (meditating, exercising), and relationships, so I haven’t had the time.

Furthermore, while I was able to get “more done” in the past, that was because I would sleep less, eat quick-fix and unhealthy food, and allow the voices that said my worth was tied to my output more weight and power.

Looking back, I realise how unhappy I was, driven by egoic fears and desires: the fear of not being good enough and the constant desire for recognition, validation, and praise.

Therefore, moving forward I will be paying attention to what life is asking of me.

Instead of unquestioningly drawing upon socially constructed or egoic ideas of what is valuable and important to guide my actions, work and relationships.

One important tool to support with this will be meditation. Currently, at this stage in my life, the quality of my life is so heavily related to the quality of my mind.

Meditation will be a priority as it is the most effective way of conditioning my mind for presence and peace.

As pointed out by the spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle;: 

‘When you live through the ego, you always reduce the present moment to a means to an end. You live for the future, and when you achieve your goals, they don’t satisfy you, at least not for long.

When you give more attention to the doing than to the future result that you want to achieve through it, you break the old egoic conditioning.

Your doing then becomes not only a great deal more effective, but infinitely more fulfilling and joyful’. (2003, p.30)

Thank you…

I am grateful if you have read this all the way to the end.

I wish you, your family and loved ones health, peace and love.

By Richard Devine (31.12.24)

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