Monitoring of early signs of anxiety and depressive disturbances in teacher and pedagogy students: structural and dynamic aspects

Abstract

The article deals with the problem of mental health in educational setting. It presents the results of monitoring of early signs of anxiety and depressive disturbances in teachers and pedagogy students in the schools of Moscow. 61 secondary school teachers and 107 pedagogy students participated in the research. Four groups of parameters were assessed: 1) personal psychopathology, 2) psychosomatic profile, 3) psycho-emotional characteristics, and 4) individual coping strategies. The following measures were used: social-demographic questionnaire, Symptom CheckList-90-Revised, Personality Disorders Questionnaire (PDQ-IV), WHO-5, Ways of Coping Questionnaire and Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire. The teachers and students had similar patho-characteristic copying patters, yet anxiety and depressive symptoms were more widespread among teachers. The beginning of professional career (work with children in the summer camp) leads to significant increase in the level of anxiety and depressiveness, as well as to cardinal individual changes in the structure of copying strategies. The implications of these results for prophylactics of professional burnout at different stages of teaching career are discussed.