Teacher Stress Related to Student Mental Health Promotion: the Match Between Perceived Demands and Competence to Help Students with Mental Health Problems

ABSTRACT

The present study highlights teacher stress related to student mental health promotion through the relationship between perceived competence, perceived responsibility and negative emotions. Data were derived from a mixed methods design, utilizing three focus group interviews (n = 15), followed by survey research (n = 771) amongst Norwegian K–12 teachers. The results suggest that teacher stress emerges chiefly from a mismatch between feeling responsible for and being able to help students with mental health problems. The data also point to the impact of time constraints in school context. Finally, the findings reveal significantly higher levels of perceived responsibility and negative emotions amongst female teachers, and significantly lower levels of perceived responsibility amongst teachers at higher grades.

KEYWORDS:

• Student mental health promotion
• teacher stress
• school mental health
• mixed-methods design

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the 771 teachers who took part in the survey and the 15 teachers who shared their thoughts and experiences in focus group interviews. I would also like to thank the six teachers who piloted the survey and colleagues at Volda University College and University of Oslo who thoroughly reviewed the questionnaire. Finally, I would like to thank my PhD supervisors and the reviewers for their valuable and insightful comments to the manuscript.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹The project is part of the government's strategic plan for the mental health of children and young people, Promoting Mental Health Together (2003) and the Escalation Plan for Mental Health (1999–2008), and was implemented from 2004 to 2011.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by grants from The Research Council of Norway through the project “Teachers’ and students’ roles in education” at Volda University College [project number 75019].