By Ben Oroko
Teaching is, by its very nature, a rewarding and challenging profession with high levels of stress. If teachers are not supported and trained to cope with these, then teaching can become an exhausting and difficult job that negatively affects both the teacher and the pupils.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), mental health is a state of well-being in which an individual realizes his or her abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively, and by extension make a contribution to his or her community.
In other words, Mental Health incorporates all aspects of psychological, social and emotional well-being of a human being.
Mental health has a major effect on how people feel, think and act. It helps determine how they cope with stressful situations, how they relate to other people at home, at work and generally in the wider society.
It determines how people make choices about their lives and how they react to other people’s choices, hence impacting one’s life from early childhood right through to old age.
Considering the high number of teachers suffering from mental health challenges, it is important that teachers receive training to help them identify, understand and find coping skills for mental health issues facing them and get support if necessary.
This sounds noble and an important step towards creating and promoting an environment that protects and supports mental health for our teachers who are virtually second parents for our children.
This conversation needs to be part of a national programme by both government and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), to create policies and training strategies to identify and help teachers navigate through mental health challenges facing them.
It is critical that teachers need to be trained to identify problems and seek help whenever need arises as these mental health issues could come in many forms.
Mental health problems are common and treatable, but complete recovery is often a long process that requires various therapies and consistent self-discipline and effort combined with a desire to be healthy.
In a nutshell, Mental health training can help teachers and management build support systems and develop a culture of awareness and pro-active wellbeing interventions to facilitate teachers become their own healers with sufficient information to guide them and help them realize they are not unique having these kind of feelings.
However, school managements, besides offering relevant training, it is equally important to develop what can be described literally as a ‘buddy’ or mentoring system ,whereby senior staff or colleagues can be taught to offer non-judgmental, effective support to those struggling with mental health challenges facing their colleagues.
Having this implemented, along with training to all staff, and then mental health issues might be avoided because staff will be empowered to recognize possible problems before they become serious.
As a deterrent measure, it is worthy for organizations to establish an open-door policy, which to a larger extent can also help teachers solve problems or concerns which will avoid mental health issues developing to alarming levels.
Having extra training and professional development in matters of mental health or related matters can help with staff retention, since staff feel that they are being heard, particularly if the training is interactive.
Teacher training should include ways to promote mental health in children. From early education, teachers can be instrumental in early interventions like stability at home, proper rest and nutrition, a supportive, relevant and stimulating curriculum and protection from threat, humiliation or harm.
Poor mental health in the workplace is more common than one would think, and it can play havoc with one’s happiness, job satisfaction and career development.
Mental health problems are common and treatable, but complete recovery is often a long process that requires various therapies and consistent self-discipline and effort combined with a desire to be healthy.
Teachers are being inflicted with budget cuts, bigger classes, fewer staff members and retention problems, which increase the workload on remaining staff. Poor mental health harms the productivity, professional contentment and efficiency of teachers.
It also negatively impacts pupils, lesson planning and effective teaching. It is an important that the practical elements of teaching, like classroom control and curriculum management, become easier as teachers gain experience. This is a key motivation for protecting the mental health of young teachers.
Incorporating staff training in mental health is an important starting point in any organization, since it develops a culture of openness about mental health concerns.
Mental health training facilitates teachers to create an environment in the school that supports and identifies mental wellbeing, where all children are accepted and respected regardless of race, gender, academic ability and socio-economic status.
The writer is Communication Practitioner and Correspondent based in Kisii.
