Revista Argentina de Clínica Psicológica 2020, Vol. XXIX, N°1, 310-315
DOI: 10.24205/03276716.2020.41 310
R
ELATIONSHIP BETWEEN
J
OB
B
URNOUT AND
M
ENTAL
H
EALTH OF
T
EACHERS UNDER
W
ORK
S
TRESS
Dengping Wu
*Abstract
The mental health of teachers under work stress has a direct bearing on the teaching effect. This paper carries out a questionnaire survey on the work stress and mental health, and analyzes the survey results through regression and analysis of variance. On this basis, the author examined the factors affecting the work stress of teachers, and explored the relationship between work stress, mental health and job burnout. The results show that the work stress of teachers is induced by factors like work intensity, school management, social environment, economic situation, student pressure, career development and family background, with work intensity being the primary inducer; the work stress of teachers has a positive correlation with job burnout, so does mental health. This research lays the theoretical basis for protecting the mental health of teachers.
Key words: Teacher Education, Job Burnout, Mental Health, Occupational Stress, Questionnaire Survey.
Received: 06-03-19 | Accepted: 15-10-19
INTRODUCTION
In recent years, the society and schools at all levels have more concerned the mental health of students. They have also taken appropriate measures to relieve the pressures from students'
study and life, for example, organize
extracurricular activities for students. However, they always turn a deaf ear to teachers’ stress and mental health (Sergio & Tatrow, 1998; Li, Kan, Liu et al., 2015; Wu, Zhu, Li et al., 2008). The survey has found that the teacher group also suffers a greater stress psychologically. It is not optimistic about their mental health status (Baka, 2015; Bernotaite & Malinauskiene, 2017). The pressures from life, work and social environment, etc. may have an adverse impact on teachers’ mental health, and the probability that psychological disorder occurs in this occupation goes far higher than that of general
Guangdong University of Petrochemical Technology, Maoming 525000, China.
E-Mail: [email protected]
population (Lasalvia & Tansella, 2011; Carlson & Thompson, 1995). For now, it is possible that the teachers' occupation stress is more likely to harm their physical and mental health, thereby degrading their teaching quality and behaviors and quality of life (Wang, Ramos, Wu et al., 2015; Mearns & Cain, 2003; Doef & Maes, 2002).
Teachers' occupation stress can also lead them to burnout, that is, indolence, slackness, and lack of professionalism and unintentional improvement for teaching quality. This phenomenon is called job burnout (Anderson, evinson, Barker et al., 1999; Jiang, 2017). If it is not timely modulated, anyone will be easily misunderstood to hold a problematic attitude towards work and coldly treated by schools and colleagues around. Teachers may blow off steam to students. This kind of job burnout phenomenon also puts teachers' psychological and physiological conditions at a disadvantage. When they can’t find effective defense against such psychological stress, the quality of life and career development of individuals will be worsened, even spreading to the work quality of the groups to which they are assigned (Antoniou, Polychroni, & Vlachakis, 2006,).
DENGPING WU
311
These concerns may also be likely to entrench teachers' occupation into unstable position,
consequently hindering student's academic
development and fulfillment of educational objectives (Chenevey, Ewing, & Whittington, 2008; Fimian, Pierson, & Mchardy, 1986). Therefore, the occupational stress and mental health of teachers should be concerned by the schools in the society. It is imperative to carry out a systematic study on how to beat teachers' occupational stress to make them do well with psychotherapy.
To address the above concerns, this paper statistically concludes data about the occupational stress and mental health status of teachers by a questionnaire survey, and analyzes it with the data regression analysis and the analysis of variance. The factors influencing teachers' occupational stress are studied. The last part is the exploration of the relationship between teacher's occupational stress and burnout, and between teachers’ job burnout and mental health. This study lays a scientific foundation and serves as a theoretical support for releasing teachers' occupational stress, preventing job burnout and ensuring the mental health of teachers.
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TEACHERS’
OCCUPATIONAL STRESS AND BURNOUT
Basic concepts of occupational stress and burnout
Occupational stress refers to the state of physical and psychological tensions occurred when teachers suffer effects from external environment on physical condition in pedagogy. Job burnout refers to a series of adverse symptoms such as physical fatigue, lower service ability, loss of enthusiasm, lack of passion, and indifference to others appeared under a chronic stress.
Job burnout is also manifested in the individual's occupational area, and there are symptoms such as depersonalization, sense of non-accomplishment, and emotional exhaustion. Personalization refers to the attitude the individuals hold to deny themselves, alienate others, and be indifferent to things; the sense of non-accomplishment refers to low work achievement, no sense of competence, and negative comments on one's own value; emotional exhaustion means that one has no passion for work, and is indifferent to people, and very exhaustively emotional.
Teachers’ job burnout refers to the state of negative emotions, passive attitudes, and exhausted thought under a chronic stress. They are manifested
as a typical symptom, i.e. loss of work enthusiasm, indifference to people, alienation from others, and no expectation and ambition for work. As shown in Figure 1, teachers’ occupational stress and burnout can cause different degrees of mental health problems in the teacher community.
Figure 1
.
The relationship of occupational
stress, professional burnout and mental
health of teachers
Professional pressure
Professional burnout
Mental health
Factors influencing job burnout
This paper uses the random sampling method to discuss the causes why teachers present job burnout. A questionnaire survey has been conducted among a total of 1534 teachers randomly chosen from 30 primary and senior middle schools in Jinan City. A total of 1395 copies have been available at a rate of 90.93%. The profiles of respondents are shown in Table 1.
Table 1.
Information characteristics of
respondents
Background
information Features
Number of cases
Proportion (%)
Gender Male 597 42.80%
Female 798 57.20%
Age group <35 845 60.57%
>35 550 39.43%
Education
Below specialist 321 23.01%
Specialty 511 36.63%
Undergraduate 563 40.36%
Marriage Married 231 16.56%
Unmarried 1164 83.44%
Headmaster Yes 321 23.01%
No 1074 76.99%
Teaching age
<3 years 292 20.93%
3 years -10 years 678 48.60%
>10 years 425 30.47%
As the survey shows, the elderly teachers are less likely to be tired than youths. In the emotional exhaustion dimension, older teachers have rich experience, while young teachers are immature to face work pressure. It should be intensive that relevant authorities encourage older teachers to
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN JOB BURNOUT AND MENTAL HEALTH OF TEACHERS UNDER WORK STRESS 312
help and guide youths. Schools should also concern the growth of young teachers and their adaptability to the environment in many ways. Judging from the teaching age, teachers with 3~10 years’ experience are more prone to emotional exhaustion since their enthusiasm for work fades away. Most of them get married, re-adapt to the new role of the family, new responsibility, so are prone to physical and mental fatigue. In addition to this, the class teachers are more likely to produce job burnout.
The relationship between demographic
characteristics and job burnout is studied with data available in the survey by the analysis of variance and T-test (p<0.05). The findings show that in the teachers' job burnout, average depersonalization
value is 23.21, average sense of
non-accomplishment is 5.28, and the average emotional exhaustion is 21.01. According to the Maslach method, the burnout of the survey population is divided into three levels, as shown in Table 2.
Table 2. Chinese teacher burnout scale
Dimension High Middle Low
No fulfillment >5 5-10 <5 De personalization >16 16-25 <25 Emotional exhaustion >25 19-25 <19
The relationship between teachers' job burnout and demographic characteristics is analyzed in every dimension. A multivariate linear regression analysis is built. The results are shown in Table 3. The analysis results show that the demographic characteristics have no predominant impact on teachers' job burnout.
Table 3. Multivariate analysis of teachers' job
burnout
Dimension Factor B t R F Emotional
exhaustion
Teaching age 0.913 3.921 0.824 9.321 Marriage 0.798 2.018 0.123 7.120
De personalization
Education 0.568 0.928 0.169 6.123 Headmaster 0.371 3.294 0.067 9.283
No Fulfillment Age 0.397 2.198 0.163 5.294
Relationship between teacher's occupational stress and job burnout
Teachers' stress should be surveyed from three dimensions: work, society and family. The questionnaire raises five questions, i.e. very stressful,
stressful, medium, lesser, and stress-free,
respectively, which are rated as 5~1 point (s), respectively. Calculate the average score, the survey results are shown in Figure 2.
As shown in Figure 2, the work pressure is the maximum and the family pressure is the minimum,
which implies that the teachers face a greater pressure from the students' education and the fulfillment of school education objectives in pedagogy; while the family can bring teachers a relaxed environment, let them have a full rest, but teaching task makes them feel the most stressful.
Figure 2
.
Statistical table of three factors of
teachers' occupational pressure gauge
0 1 2 3 4 5
3.93
3.01
2.36
Family pressure Sociology
pressure
Pr
es
sur
e
fact
or
Working pressure
The single factor (value R) analysis of correlation is performed on the factors influencing job burnout from three occupational stresses. The results are shown in Figure 3. Based on the analysis results, teachers’ occupational stress is significantly concerned with their burnout, that is, positively correlated to emotional exhaustion. On the whole, depersonalization is positively correlated to all factors. Among them, family pressure is the most correlated factor with burnout, while the work pressure has a highest correlation with it.
Figure 3
.
Single factor (R value) correlation
analysis
0 1 2 3 4
0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5
Family pressure Sociology pressure
Working pressure
R
value
Emotional Exhaustion Depersonalization No Fulfillment
DENGPING WU
313
Judging from the results, the occupational stress of teachers in junior and senior middle schools in China is versatile, in which the pressures from work, family, and society are in turn weaken. The teacher's student management, daily teaching, pedagogical reform, and the fulfillment of the school's teaching objectives all require to commit huge efforts, applying a heavy pressure on teachers. It has been a common phenomenon. The occupational stress incapable of defending will also lead teachers to appearing job burnout, which will further make their fulfillment of teaching work and educational objectives unfavorable. Teachers’ occupational stress is a chronic process. It should be relieved at an early stage to avoid a deep-seated contagion. Relevant authorities and schools should more concern the ponderance of the problem, and take effective measures to beat against pressure on teachers.
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TEACHERS’ BURNOUT
STATUS AND MENTAL HEALTH
Mental health status
To well know current mental health status of the teacher community, a questionnaire survey is conducted to statistically analyze the mental health status of the respondents (same as the second section), using the rating system. There are six mental health problems occurred, for each of which, four questions are raised, i.e. never (0 points), occasionally (1 points), often (2 points), and frequently (3 points). The total mental health score is 0 (min) ~ 18 (max) points. Before the survey, the applicability of the questionnaires is proved to be more reliable and effective. Repeat the analysis procedure in Section 2 for others, the relationship between teachers’ burnout and mental health should be explored by combining the correlation and regression analysis methods.
The mental health statuses of the group of teachers under survey are shown in Table 5, where T-test and the F-test get p<0.05. It is obvious that the mental health scores of male teachers are significantly lower than that of females, that is, the mental health problems of female teachers are more severe than that of males. There are also differences in the mental health status between teachers at different ages. The middle-aged teachers may have mental health problems much worse than young teachers. In addition, class teachers are more prone to mental health problems than other teachers, while unmarried teachers have mental health problems milder than married or widowed teachers.
Relationship between teachers’ mental health
and job burnout
To further discuss how teachers' mental health is subjected to job burnout, this paper controls the age of the teacher group to make a partial correlation analysis on job burnout and mental health (p<0.01). The results are shown in Figure 4. Based on the analysis results, it is known that the emotional exhaustion in teachers' burnout has a significantly positive correlation with their mental health; the depersonalization is also positively concerned to their mental health; while the teachers' sense of non-accomplishment in their work is negatively correlated with their mental health.
To further explore and predict how teachers' mental health is subjected to their job burnout, this paper takes the three indicators for teacher burnout as the independent variables, and the teacher's mental health as the dependent variable for a multivariate regression analysis. For analysis results, refer to Table 6. It is known that the indicators for burnout at the job, namely, emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and efficiency, have a certain predictive effect on teachers’ mental health status, and the emotional exhaustion is the most effective.
Table 5. Mental health of teachers with different characteristics
Mental health Sex Age
Man Woman t ＜30 30~45 ＞45 F
Mean 8.1 9.2
2.107 8.4 8.8 8.1 3.925
SD 4.1 4.0 4.2 4.2 4.3
Mental health Headmaster Marital status
Yes No t Married Unmarried Widowed F
Mean 8.3 7.5
2.418 8.12 7.91 9.2 1.52
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN JOB BURNOUT AND MENTAL HEALTH OF TEACHERS UNDER WORK STRESS 314
Table 6.
Multiple regression analysis of professional burnout on teachers' mental health
Mental health B t R R2 F
Emotional exhaustion 0.292 29.46 0.62 0.387 765.82
De personalization - - - - -
Fulfillment -0.067 -6.81 0.65 0.396 402.61
Table 7.
Multiple regression analysis of professional burnout on teachers' mental health
Mental health B t R R2 F
Working pressure 0.361 11.25 0.435 0.147 246.85
Sociology pressure 0.248 4.52 0.368 0.161 136.73
Family pressure 0.173 3.06 0.359 0.154 98.64
Figure 4
.
The correlation between job
burnout and mental health (p
<
0.01)
-0.3 0.0 0.3 0.6 0.9
0.61
0.28
-0.12
Fulfillment De
personalization
R
v
al
u
e
Emotional exhaustion
Mental health
Figure
5
.
The
correlation
between
occupational stress and teachers' mental
health
0 1 2 3 4
0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5
0.381
0.271
0.216
Family pressure Sociology pressure
Working pressure
R
v
al
u
e
R value
After controlling teacher's age as a factor, the partial correlation analysis and the multiple linear regression analysis are performed on the relationship between different occupational stresses
(work, society and family) and mental health of teachers, for results from both, see Figure 5 and Table 7. As shown in Figure 5, teachers’ mental health has a significant correlation with their occupational stress, especially more with the work pressure (from student management, daily teaching, teaching reform, and fulfillment of teaching objectives), but less with family pressure. As shown in Table 7, the pressures from work, society and family all have different predictive effects on teachers' mental health, but work pressure is most effective in predicting teachers' mental health.
CONCLUSION
This paper conducts a survey on teachers’ occupational stress and the factors influencing their mental health and analyzes the findings with the regression analysis and the analysis of variance. At last, a systematic study traces the relationships between teachers' occupational stress and job burnout, and between teachers' job burnout and mental health status. Here draw the main conclusions as follows:
(1) Most teachers are under the different degrees of occupational stresses that mainly originate from work intensity, school management, social environment, economic situation, student
pressure, career development and family
background. Among them, work intensity is a key influencing factor.
(2) Female teachers have a greater occupational stress than male teachers. Married teachers are more stressed than other unmarried teachers. Class teachers also have a rising stress; in addition, the occupational stresses of teachers at different ages vary from each other. It is more likely for middle-aged teachers to generate greater occupation stress.
(3) The teacher's occupational stress is positively correlated with job burnout, that is, the greater the
DENGPING WU
315
occupational stress, the worse the burnout phenomenon; the teachers' occupational stress is also significantly concerned with their mental health. The probability that teachers' mental health problem occurs increases as their occupational stresses are added more.
Acknowledgement
This study was supported by Youth project of ministry of education of National Education Sciences of China during the 13th five-year plan (EIA160455).
REFERENCES
Anderson, V. L., Levinson, E. M., Barker, W., & Kiewra, K. R. (1999). The effects of meditation on teacher perceived occupational stress, state and trait
anxiety, and burnout. School Psychology
Quarterly, 14(1), 3-25.
Antoniou, A. S., Polychroni, F., & Vlachakis, A. N. (2006). Gender and age differences in occupational stress and professional burnout between primary and high‐school teachers in Greece. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 21(7), 682-690.
Baka, L. (2015). Does job burnout mediate negative effects of job demands on mental and physical health in a group of teachers? testing the energetic process of job demands-resources model. International Journal of Occupational Medicine & Environmental Health, 28(2), 335-346.
Bernotaite, L., & Malinauskiene, V. (2017). Workplace bullying and mental health among teachers in relation to psychosocial job characteristics and burnout. International
Journal of Occupational Medicine and
Environmental Health, 30(4), 629-640.
Carlson, B. C., & Thompson, J. A. (1995). Job burnout and job leaving in public school teachers:
implications for stress management.
International Journal of Stress Management, 2(1), 15-29.
Chenevey, J., Ewing, J., & Whittington, S. (2008). Teacher burnout and job satisfaction among agricultural education teachers. Journal of
Agricultural Education, 49(3), 12-22.
Doef, M. V. D., & Maes, S. (2002). Teacher-specific quality of work versus general quality of work assessment: A comparison of their validity regarding burnout, (psycho)somatic well-being and job satisfaction. Anxiety Stress & Coping, 15(4), 327-344.
Fimian, M. J., Pierson, D., & Mchardy, R. (1986). Occupational stress reported by teachers of learning disabled and nonlearning disabled
handicapped students. Journal of Learning
Disabilities, 19(3), 154-158.
Jiang, X. R. (2017). Coping style, job burnout and mental health of university teachers of the
millennial generation. EURASIA Journal of
Mathematics, Science and Technology Education,
13(7), 3379-3392.
Lasalvia, A., & Tansella, M. (2011). Occupational stress and job burnout in mental health.
Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences, 20(4), 279-285.
Li, X., Kan, D., Liu, L., Shi, M., Wang, Y., Yang, X., Wang, J., Wang, L., & Wu, H. (2015). The mediating role of psychological capital on the association between occupational stress and job burnout among bank employees in China. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 12(3), 2984-3001.
Mearns, J., & Cain, J. E. (2003). Relationships between teachers " occupational stress and their burnout and distress: Roles of coping and negative mood regulation expectancies. Anxiety Stress & Coping, 16(1), 71-82.
Sergio, R. G., & Tatrow, K. (1998). Occupational stress,
burnout, and health in teachers: A
methodological and theoretical analysis. Review of Educational Research, 68(1), 61-99.
Wang, Y., Ramos, A., Wu, H., Liu, L., Yang, X., Wang, J., & Wang, L. (2015). Relationship between occupational stress and burnout among Chinese teachers: a cross-sectional survey in Liaoning, China. International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health, 88(5), 589-597. Wu, S., Zhu, W., Li, H., Wang, Z., & Wang, M. (2008).
Relationship between job burnout and
occupational stress among doctors in China.
