I have felt quite strongly that there is a great need for more mental health support for educators. When I started to research the topic, I was surprised to see that not only was the profession of teacher/educator not on any of the top ten lists for jobs with the highest suicide rate, but they weren’t even in the top twenty (CBS News: These Jobs Have the Highest Rates of Suicide).

I researched further and found several articles that described the mental health needs of educators in England. This only strengthened my belief that England is much further ahead in the world of advocacy around mental health. The recent Project Eighty Four is just one example in which Calm brought the topic of male suicide to the rooftops (quite literally)!

I decided to put together a survey of my own to prove a hypothesis that I had developed: I believe there is a very high number of educators who are struggling with their mental health. I believe that, particularly in the urban settings, many staff members are dealing with students who are going in and out of complex trauma on a daily basis. This includes the type of trauma in these young people’s lives that I cannot even begin to fathom. The fact that many of them have even made it to school is mind-boggling. Even students who are not going in and out of trauma are, often times these days, facing mental health challenges as seen by the data. In 2016, suicide was the second leading cause of death for groups aged 10-14 and 15-24 (https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/suicide.shtml). Many of our students cannot get the medication they need because of various reasons, including a lack of insurance. Others are on month-long waiting lists to get a proper assessment or to find a bed in a facility because they are suicidal. Yet, with all of these challenges, we expect our students to show up to our schools, sit in their chairs quietly, and perform well on our standardized tests (or we could have detrimental repercussions from the federal government, such as the loss of public funds). There’s a shortage of school social workers and school counselors. Not only does this create an unrealistic student to social worker/school counselor ratio adding to their stress, but it also puts classroom teachers in the situation of having to ‘play’ counselor or social worker. Many times our school nurses are dealing more with psychosomatic symptoms than anything actually physical. Building administrators are faced with deciding on consequences for students who they know are facing incredible life challenges. They are also dealing with parents or guardians who are often times dealing with their own life struggles and mental health difficulties.

So, this brings me back to my survey. I created a survey to send to public school educators (staff of any positions in a public school system in the United States). Just prior to making my very brief, confidential survey of eight questions public, I bumped into another survey that had revolved around the mental health of educators: the 2017 Educator Quality of Work Life Survey. This was a 30-question survey conducted by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the Badass Teachers Association (BATs). Some of the key findings that stood out to me from their survey results were:

• Teachers reported having poor mental health for 11 or more days per month at twice the rate of the general U.S. workforce. They also reported lower-than-rec-ommended levels of health outcomes and sleep per night.
• In response to the question “How often is work stressful?” nearly a quarter of respondents said “always”.
• Educators and school staff find their work “always” or “often” stressful 61 percent of the time, significantly higher than workers in the general population, who report
  that work is “always” or “often”stressful only 30 percent of the time.
• Educators are much more likely to be bullied, harassed and threatened at work than other workers.
  • 43 percent of respondents in the public survey group reported they had been bullied, harassed or threatened in the last year.
• Teachers and school staff are significantly more stressed than other U.S. workers:
  • Respondents to the public survey reported an…average of 12 days in the last 30 that their mental health was not good
  • 21 percent of educators in the random sample characterized their mental health as not good for 11 or more days in the last 30, significantly higher than U.S. workers generally, less than 10 percent of whom reported poor mental health for 11 or more days in the past month, according to national data from 2014.
• Educators’ physical health is more likely to suffer than other U.S. workers

My first thought was that since a survey had been recently completed, perhaps there is no need for my survey. However, after further reflection, I decided that the fact that the AFT and BATs had such a survey was acknowledgement that perhaps my theory had some validity. In addition to that, my survey is quite different. None of the eight questions that I ask were a part of their survey and my questions, I believe, are much more direct in getting to the mental health of educators.

In the end, once the need is made more apparent, my goal is to advocate for a much better system of support for educators. I believe that districts can do much more than simply hand a brochure to a struggling staff member and offer a few sessions of free, confidential counseling. United States public school educators are dealing with an incredible amount of stress in what is arguably one of the most important roles in our country. We can do better…we must do better… to support them!

If you are a public school educator in the United States, please consider taking this very brief (eight question), anonymous, completely confidential survey regarding Mental Health.

As always, comments to this post (and all others) are welcomed and encouraged! Thank you!