Food, booze and cash are among the things that stressed teachers are turning to in a bid to cope with the pressures of the profession, a report has shown.

In a study of 1,500 teachers by the Education Support Partnership about mental health in education, half (47 per cent) said they had turned to food, a third (32 per cent) to alcohol and 22 per cent to unnecessary spending to help cope with stress. More than a third who said they used alcohol were headteachers or senior leaders.

A total of 31 per cent of teachers have experienced a mental health problem in the past academic year, and more than half are suffering from insomnia.

ESP chief executive Julian Stanley said that the need to protect the mental health and wellbeing of teachers had now reached a “critical” point.

“Over a third of education professionals said their job had made them feel stressed most or all of the time in the past few weeks, compared to 18 per cent of the UK workforce overall,” he said. “A staggering 57 per cent have also considered leaving the sector within the past two years because of mounting health pressures.”

Forgetfulness has risen from 27 per cent to 41 per cent in the past year, while difficulty concentrating has gone from 27 per cent to 40 per cent - in what the report describes as “a picture of an increasingly frustrated workforce, struggling to cope”.

Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT headteachers’ union, said: “Everyone knows that on a good day, teaching is one of the most rewarding careers imaginable. The trouble is, there just aren’t enough good days.

“Although the picture is pretty dire, we should not despair because the solutions are clear: pay needs to rise and workload needs to drop. Frustratingly, very little progress is being made.”

If you are an education professional suffering problems with mental health, you can call the Education Support Partnership’s confidential helpline on 0800 056 2561