It is well known that teaching is a high-pressure job. You are expected to juggle lesson planning, adapting content for different needs, marking, dealing with challenging behaviour, and providing support and feedback on top of physically teaching each day.
Many teachers cope with these demands due to their passion for education and their drive to make a difference - but performing such a taxing role long-term can lead to serious consequences for mental health.
Work-related anxiety
You may have seen the results of Education Support’s Teacher Wellbeing Index 2019, which listed (among other findings) that a third of school staff have diagnosed mental health issues, and 78 per cent have experienced symptoms which could be indicative of poor mental health, including insomnia, recurring headaches or migraines, difficulty concentrating, and panic attacks.
In fact, work-related anxiety and depression are much more common in the education sector than in the general workforce, with 2,100 cases per 100,000 compared with 1,320 for other occupations. And some 72 per cent of all education professionals also reported feeling stressed.
Budget cuts, staff retention difficulties, bigger class sizes, and the considerable changes made to the national curriculum have all contributed to greater workload, and, thus, greater stress. And 2020 has also brought unforeseen challenges for mental health, in the form of lockdowns and other local and national restrictions.
Lockdown and teacher mental health
The lockdown that began in March was a precarious situation for education professionals: there were rapid changes in guidance and worries about how schools could operate safely, as well as how lockdown would affect students’ achievements.
The new report from Education Support shows that 52 per cent of teachers and 48 per cent of all other education professionals experienced a decline in mental health over lockdown as a result.
Now that schools have returned, the worries have not eased.
You may feel apprehensive about your safety, have concerns about completing your catch-up curriculum, or worry about your students: one of High Speed Training’s recent studies found that 80 per cent of teachers expect a rise in mental health issues among pupils due to the pressures they will continue to face over the year.
This concern is echoed by parents and the children themselves - nearly a quarter of parents believe that lockdown has worsened their child’s mental health, while 15 per cent of children have concerns about one of their peers.
Taking these factors into consideration, it is unsurprising that you may feel emotionally exhausted. However, it is important that you take active steps to support your mental health during this time. Poor mental health can affect your mood, appetite, physical health, personal relationships, work performance, and even your students’ progress.
Completing the right training can lessen the number of mental health issues experienced by education professionals, and help them to enjoy the positive aspects of their job again. But despite the critical importance of mental health, High Speed Training found that a third of teachers don’t believe they have had sufficient training to deal with mental health matters.
The role of online training
To help alleviate this problem, High Speed Training has produced an online course specifically for education professionals. The course - Mental Health Training for Teachers - was created with the help of experts in the area, and has received CPD accreditation for meeting CPD guidelines.
It includes guidance on managing your mental health, reducing work-related stress and performing self-care, as well as explanations of how to recognise mental health issues in yourself and others.
Throughout last month - in light of World Teachers’ Day on 5 October, and World Mental Health Day on 10 October - the course was free, and during this period nearly 4,000 people completed it, giving feedback that it is “very beneficial” and “helpful, enlightening and practical”, with one participant saying, “I will suggest that all staff take it at my school.”
Understanding your mental health can improve your job performance and satisfaction, increase your productivity and reduce your absences from work. It could also give you the confidence - and the emotional means - to talk about mental health with your students, and is associated with better student performance and wellbeing.
While you can’t necessarily change the stresses of your job, what you can change is how you react to them, by ensuring that you are in the best emotional situation to deal with anything thrown your way. We hope that this course helps you to do so.
