Teacher Mental Health: Causative Stress Factors

Teaching is a career devoted to the education of a diverse generation of students. While an altruistic pursuit, there is a tsunami of disruptive issues impacting that quest and affecting teacher mental health. Shifting family values, unstable home environments, diminished parental engagement, and less ‘quality time,’ among others, are prevalent across the country. Political input, funding conflicts, public accountability pressures, and testing results further complicate the mission.

Since attracting, hiring, and nurturing educators is fundamental to bolstering student performance, it’s imperative to assess the deterrents that disrupt this process. A RAND 2022 survey indicated approximately 59 % of teachers are burned out, especially linked to students’ academic performance and behavior management (Will, 2022).

In comparison to 20th–century professionals, today’s teachers must minimally possess an inquisitive, problem–solving intellect, emotional stability, self – confidence and maturity to succeed. Hiring Generation Z candidates, however, is fraught with potential concerns, as they are prone to seek immediate gratification, are frequently independent, and rely on technology. Their lives are more chaotic, less stable, and aligned with economic pressures, family obligations, and self – actualization.

Factors of Stress Affecting Teacher Mental Health

A growing trend of utilizing professional therapists is an indicator of stress-disrupting equilibrium. Achieving independence is a multi-faceted stage influenced by career options, financial resources, and significant others, all potential impediments to becoming an educator. Finding roommates is frequently a necessity for employment, a common denominator for new hires. Burdened by loans, it often sways decisions toward lucrative positions in other careers. Relocating to rural communities frequently deters candidates. Graduate degree pursuits are also a major priority that might limit geographical options.

Besides compensation, limited options for advancement, few opportunities to shape innovation, and a general stagnation of assignments all worsen teachers’ mental health. This restricts the expression of talent, compelling premature resignations to more progressive communities. A self–fulfilling cycle of staff turnover perpetuates impoverished districts, penalizing remaining personnel with excessive obligations that eventually result in their burnout.

Support For Teacher Mental Health-Professional Development

Coupled with training and mentoring further complicates any initiative to attract, nurture, and retain qualified professionals. Consequently, there are .55 candidates for every one position nationally (NEA, 2022). Unfortunately, this scenario is prevalent across thousands of schools nationally, exerting an enormous toll on teachers’ mental health (ABC News, 2023).

A progressive university preparation with varied experiences in multiple locations is mandatory to compliment personal attributes. Unfortunately, there’s a significant gap in many graduates’ preservice training, especially in programming for special education students and classroom management practices. Premature burnout and resignations are correlated with these deficits in communities struggling to reduce depressed test scores.

Shifting Technology & Accountability Standards

Instructional programs rely on innovative technology, an especially challenging shift for veterans who have successfully relied on teacher-directed methods in prior decades. Modified strategies are ‘tiered’ to complement students’ unique profiles, alternative goals, assessments, and outcomes. Personalized plans of specialized teaching procedures are coordinated by teams of colleagues depending on compliance and cooperation. A complex task for most professionals is data collection which provides the foundation for appropriate adjustments.

Intense accountability standards are stressful for teachers lacking sustained training and mentoring throughout this process. Schools with persistent achievement gaps often assign teachers to subjects beyond their certification, further weakening teachers’ commitment and longevity. This scenario is a primary contributor to teacher mental health stressors because of its prevalence and resistance to change.

Supporting Students Social Emotional Needs

Students’ psychological ‘neediness’ is another factor impacting teachers’ success. Coping with the pandemic was a catalyst for complex affective needs requiring school and community services. Mental health initiatives, social emotional learning programs, and psychological counseling have dramatically altered schools’ orientation and functioning (Cauthen, 2019). Addressing students’ vulnerability, immature socialization, and interpersonal skills, for example, subtracts instructional focus, imposing extra tasks to accomplish. While legitimately critical to students’ welfare, many staff have received minimal preparation for this new assignment, straining their flexibility and tolerance.

An equally challenging responsibility is managing student behavior. Most beginning teachers enter the profession with an idealized vision of instructing capable students who respect authority. While certainly accurate in many communities, all teachers will be exposed to some variation of management problems during their careers. Primary-grade learners, for example, are attempting to master basic academic expectations and social–behavioral norms. Peer relationships are defined by cooperation, friendships, and tolerance. Misbehavior is generally attention-seeking, impulsive, and egocentric. Persistent misbehavior is stressful since students remain with their grade teacher for the entire day.

Secondary students, by contrast, are entering the mystifying stage of adolescence, which has a profound effect on acquiring socially appropriate conduct. Self-identity, social popularity, and independence are hallmarks of this stage. Coping with adolescents’ emotional nature and the quest for self-expression often disrupts instruction, frustrating teachers’ authority. Middle school learners are particularly obsessed with socializing, expressing excessive energy to misbehave without self–restraint.

Daily exchanges typically exhaust teachers’ composure and confidence, a pattern that eventually precedes mental health issues. This reality is a predictor of staff shortages in middle schools. High school students’ passage toward graduation requires teachers’ support, patience, and empathy, a complex task balanced by instructional expertise. Coping with ninth graders’ immaturity is especially difficult for beginning staff, who anticipated the opportunity to instruct their specialty.

How Teacher Mental Health Manifests

Stress is manifested in a variety of actions that follow a progression from mild to severe. Missing assignments, ignoring deadlines, interpersonal conflicts, and emotional–physical symptoms are general predictors. Responses are often subtle during phase one, while overt differences in personality often appear as stress intensifies. Excitement and composure decline, and apathy to anxiety dominate. Optimism is replaced by pessimism toward both students and colleagues, especially linked to behavior challenges. Cooperation diminishes, followed by indifference or hostility. Ultimately, emotional and physical exhaustion results in chronic absences and burnout.

A coordinated national inquiry into the current teacher mental health crisis is imperative to address the shortage of educators impacting our country’s schools. An analysis of the myriad of factors correlated with both preparing and nurturing staff is crucial to reverse this cycle. Otherwise, student performance will be severely compromised. The nation cannot tolerate this dilemma festering without severe consequences.

Teacher Mental Health Sources

• Cauthen, Leilani, ‘Schools Say Highest Pressure Stems From Their Students’ Social – Emotional Needs,’edCircuit, 8/23/2019
• Will, Madeline, ‘Stress, Burnout, Depression: Teachers and Principals Are Not Doing
  Well, New Data Confirms.’ Education Week, 6/15/’22
• WE ARE TEACHERS, ‘THESE 2022 TEACHER SHORTAGE STATISTICS PROVE WE NEED TO FIX THIS PROFESSION,’ 
• Pelika, Stacey, ‘6 Charts That Explain the Educator Shortage’, 9/30/’22
• Jones II, Arthur, ‘Most of the US is dealing with a teaching shortage, but the data isn’t so simple,’ 2/11/2023
• Teacher Mental Health: A National Dilemma