ABSTRACT

Objectives:

Factors such as early recognition of mental health problems and correct application to health services are evaluated within mental health literacy. Increasing teachers’ mental health literacy improves their skills in helping and guiding students by enabling them to recognize the students’ mental health problems. The aim of the study is to evaluate the mental health literacy level of teachers and thus to guide the literature and future intervention studies.

Materials and Methods:

This descriptive study was conducted in 2020 by face-to-face interviews with teachers over a period of 9 months. The study was carried out in two parts: the questions about sociodemographic data of the teachers and the Mental Health Literacy Scale developed by Jung and later adapted into Turkish by Göktaş. p<0.05 was considered significant.

Results:

Three hundred seventy-eight teachers participated in the study and their professional experience was 15.4±9.7 years on average. The teachers rated between 1 and 22 points from the mental health literacy scale, with a median value of 15.0. Scores of female teachers were higher than males with a score of 15.0 (p=0.001). Psychological counseling and guidance teachers got the highest score with 18.0 and mathematics teachers got the lowest score with 13.0 points. The scores of psychological counseling and guidance teachers are significantly higher than the scores of primary school, kindergarten, Turkish, religious culture, and mathematics teachers. The median score of the primary school teachers was 14.5, which was lower than the general teachers’ score.

Conclusion:

Young people in the period that we can accept as the onset of mental health problems may experience reservations about receiving mental health services for various reasons. A higher level of mental health literacy is expected from teachers, who are of great importance in preventing this situation. Eliminating the lack of knowledge about the subject in teachers by providing necessary training will assure great benefits for the society and individual health.