Role of School Teachers in Pupils’ Mental Health Promotion

Background: Mental health is an integral and essential component of health.School
teachers should have an effective role in promoting mental health of their students.
Objective: To investigate teachers` attitude towards their role in pupils’ mental health
promotion, and identify barriers they may encounter.Methods:Multistage random
sampling was undertaken, where Misr El Gededa and El Nozha Educational Zones were
selected randomly from education zones in Cairo governorate. Twenty two (22)schools
were selected from different strata of governmental, experimental and private schools in
the preparatory stage for boys and girls. All available school teachers were invited to
complete a self-administered questionnaire including questions aboutpersonal
characteristics, work related qualifications andteachers’ cognitive, affective and behavior
attitude towards pupils mental health promotion. Results:382 teachers (95.5%) agreed
that teachers play an influential role in recognizing pupils with mental health problems,
389 teacher (97.25%) agreed that referring pupils with mental health problems for
appropriate early support reduces their risk of developing mental health problems, 374
(93.5%) agreed that schools hold a unique position in positively affecting the mental
health of pupils and nearly 350 teachers(88%) reported inadequatetrainingto recognize the
earlysigns of pupils’mental healthproblems, concerns over workload and lack of services
that promote teachers mental health to mitigate the workload before expecting from them to
promote pupils' mental health as barriers to pupils mental health promotion. Total scores of
the three dimensions of attitude (cognitive, affective and behavioral) were as regard the
following variables the two educational zones, different school types, educational stages,
graduation college, and taking educational diploma among those graduated from college
other than graduation college, attending activities about pupils` mental health,teaching for
special needs pupils and teaching for pupils with mentalhealth problems.Conclusion:Most
of teachers had positive attitude toward their role in pupils` mental health promotion.
Recommendation:Implementation of a training program for teachers on a screening tool
to pick up cases that need specialized help and activation of the role of teachers in
participation in health promoting activities with their pupils.