Well-Being and Mental Health in Teachers: The Life Impact of COVID-19

Abstract

The impact of the pandemic on teachers’ mental health has also been an important issue. The aim of the study was to analyze the vital impact of COVID-19, spirituality, and the use of social-emotional strategies on teacher well-being, mediated by mental health. The sample was non-random, inviting all teachers in a city North of Chile to participate in the study. The sample consisted of 624 teachers. A total of 74.4% were women and 25.6% were men. The mean age was 44.1 and the standard deviation was 11.9. A total of 56.4% belonged to public schools and 43.6% belonged to subsidized schools. Structural equations were used to analyze the data, finding a mental health mediating effect between the death of a close person, affected areas and family history with life satisfaction. Spirituality and the use of socio-emotional strategies self-applied by the teachers had no direct relationship with their mental health, so their mediating effect in relation to life satisfaction was discarded. Teachers who used social-emotional strategies, as well as those who reported higher levels of spirituality, obtained greater satisfaction with life, both general and specifically. Women had higher levels of depression, anxiety and stress symptomatology, but also higher levels of life satisfaction. The implications are discussed.

A Systematic Review on Teachers’ Well-Being in the COVID-19 Era

“…The sudden transition to a remote online learning paradigm along with its concomitant social isolation effect on student-learner interactions and teaching quality using the virtual medium was also cited in Creely et al's [125] collaborative ethnographic study as a key risk factor associated with well-being concerns by academics with potential employee burnout pending for the prioritization of academic well-being at a policy level. Similar findings provided by Lee et al's [126] study also underscore the significance of supporting TWB at the school level to enable educators to maintain their self-efficacy in times of crisis with the implementation of targeted positive psychological skills interventions to boost higher levels of mental health and greater life satisfaction [127].…”

“…Other elements associated with solid school organization reported in relevant studies to sustain and boost TWB levels within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic were: (i) the existence of an organized, supportive school environment as a critical job resource and enabler of TWB that impacts teachers' fulfillment of basic psychological needs for autonomy, ensures collaboration with colleagues and accomplishment in pandemic emergency remote teaching (ERT) by prescribing the principles for effective distance education teaching practices [104], and promotes teachers' creative teaching self-efficacy by enhancing their dispositional joy and general positive affect while reducing general negative affect [144]; (ii) empowering leadership that was found to be associated with lower levels of job stress and higher levels of job well-being and perceived organizational support [145], enabling preschool teachers to link their personal goals to organizational goals, motivate and guide them to better achieve their mission with organizational support, and thus achieve a high level of well-being; (iii) the allocation of low teacher workloads by the school administration, which was found to be positively associated with work satisfaction and work-related coherence, leading to enhanced TWB COVID-19 rates in [115]; (iv) the adoption of schoolbased TWB interventions within the COVID-19 era, as documented in three action-oriented studies in our sample, which were directed at the exploration of TWB improvement using peer support in digital settings [146], the implementation of in-service professional training TWB sessions aiming at reducing teachers' psychological distress [147], and emergent mindfulness and cognitive reframing TWB approaches with reported increased gains in teachers' resilience and psychological well-being in times of crisis [148]. Provision of training support in ERT-related issues and teachers' eagerness to seek religious and spiritual support to regain their well-being by overcoming the numerous pre-and post-pandemic challenges and difficulties were reported by [149], with self-reported spirituality being only indirectly associated with TWB enhancement and teachers' overall mental health in one study [127]. Quantitative data collection methodologies with the administration of self-reported online survey questionnaires were used in thirty-two of the reviewed studies (60.3%), which were mainly designed as descriptive, cross-sectional empirical research questionnaires to explore TWB lived experiences and status in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.…”

“…Sample sizes range between 8000 and 60 participants. The most common data analysis procedures used were descriptive statistics, exploratory factor analyses, e.g., [105,143], and latent profile analysis TWB profiling in the pandemic years [126], correlations, linear regression analyses, e.g., [98], multilevel regression modeling, e.g., [138], and structural equation analysis, e.g., [117,127], to investigate determinants of TWB, and analysis of variance (ANOVA) procedures, e.g., [112,115].…”

“…The instrumentation utilized for TWB measurement in these studies consisted of (a) the adaptation of widely established and standardized psychometric scales of wellbeing and mental health such as the International Barometer of Education Personnel's Health and Wellbeing [142], the World Health Organization Well-being Index [115,134], Ryff's Psychological Well-Being Scales [101,102], the PERMA Profiler Questionnaire [99,140], Diener et al's (2009) Psychological Wellbeing Scale [103,139], the modified BBC Subjective Well-being scale (BBC-SWB) [118], and Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) [126] and (b) the compilation of context-specific well-being instruments, valid for experimentation within a particular educational context. Instances of such scales are Alves et al's [105] Well-being and Health Perception Scale and Perception Scale of Well-Being with the Professional Situation in Times of Pandemic, Eadie's [98] Early Childhood Professional Wellbeing scale, Smith and James' [141] Wellbeing Process Questionnaire, and Trindade et al's [106] Questionnaire of the Perception of Well-Being at Work, (c) the use and appropriation of instruments used in prior TWB research in view of COVID-19 new reality, e.g., [112,115,117,145], (d) the development of new survey COVID-19-oriented questionnaires in relation to TWB [107,116,143], and (e) the use of scales that measure TWB indirectly as a function of work-related anxiety [121], depression, general and specific life satisfaction [124,127], teacher stress and exhaustion [100,108], job satisfaction [109,137,138], teacher burnout [137], teacher work engagement, and emotional exhaustion [110,…”