Doctors and teachers suffering high levels of stress and mental health problems Two studies will add to concerns that public sector workers in the UK are struggling with the demands being placed on them

Nearly a third of doctors may be ‘burnt out’ and the number of teachers reporting problems with their mental health has increased fivefold since the 1990s, research has found.

The two separate studies will add to concerns that public sector workers in the UK are struggling with the demands being placed on them after a decade of austerity.

In the first study, published in BMJ Open, doctors were sent an online survey which aimed to find out how well they cope with the pressures they face, as well as prevailing levels of stress in the profession.

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Responses were received from 1,651 doctors, with the survey finding that nearly one in three UK doctors may be burnt out and stressed.

‘Emotional resilience’

Doctors working in emergency medicine were significantly more burnt out than those from other specialities and they also registered the highest scores for stress.

While only representative of a snapshot of doctors who chose to respond to the survey, the analysis is billed as the largest published study of its kind.

The authors of the research said that while “emotional resilience training” is the favoured tactic to ward off burnout, doctors should not be made solely responsible for their own wellbeing.

“Doctors cannot be expected to recover from the emotional stress and adversity they encounter in their role as clinicians while managing a heavy workload in an under-funded, over-worked system,” they write.

“It is unlikely that emotional resilience is all that is required to cope with increasing regulation, litigation, and administration.”

Teaching ‘in crisis’

In the second study from UCL, researchers looked at the mental health and wellbeing of teachers in England between 1992 and 2018.

The research found that around five per cent of teachers in England now say that they suffer from a long-lasting mental health problem – up from just one per cent in the 1990s.

There has also been an increase in the percentage of education professionals who have been prescribed antidepressant medication, from about one per cent in the early 2000s to around five per cent today.

However, the researchers said care should be taken in drawing conclusions from the figures, because the increase could be due to more teachers being willing to talk about their mental health and get help.

Other professionals – such as nurses, accountants and human resource workers – are also now much more likely to report suffering from a mental health problem than in the 1990s.

UCL’s Professor John Jerrim said: “The teaching profession in England is currently in the midst of a crisis and one potential reason why it’s struggling to recruit and retain enough teachers is due to the pressures of the job.

He added that “more needs to be done to monitor and improve the mental health and wellbeing of the teaching profession”.