How does the mental health and wellbeing of teachers compare to other professions? Evidence from eleven survey datasets

John Jerrim, Sam Sims, Hannah Taylor, Becky Allen

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

There is growing concern about the mental health and wellbeing of teachers globally, with the stress caused by the job thought to be a key factor driving many to leave the profession. It is often claimed that teachers have worse mental health and wellbeing outcomes than other occupational groups. Yet academic evidence on this matter remains limited, with some studies supporting this notion, while a handful of others do not. We contribute to this debate by providing the largest, most comprehensive analysis of differences in mental health and wellbeing between teachers and other professional workers to date. Drawing upon data from across 11 social surveys, we find little evidence that teachers have worse health and wellbeing outcomes than other occupational groups. Research in this area must now shift away from whether teachers are disproportionately affected by such issues towards strengthening the evidence on the likely drivers of mental ill‐health within the education profession.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)659-689
JournalReview of Education
Volume8
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 5 Jul 2020

Bibliographical note

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution‐NonCommercial‐NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non‐commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

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