A Survey Of English Teachers’ Mental Health Problems

Mental health is the outward performance for the good psychological quality of English teachers. Over the years, the English teacher education in China mainly focused on teachers ’subject knowledge and teaching skills training, with more attention to the English teachers’ professional development. The emphasis lies in the social value as well as the instrumental value of English teachers, whereas the development of the English teachers’mental health is relatively ignored.Nevertheless, there is no established standard measurement for domestic and foreign scholars on whether the mental health of teachers is qualified or not. On the one hand, English teachers’psychology is influenced by their personal growth direction. If comparing with the professional development of teachers, English teachers’psychology is a research trend pending the majority of scholars to do further investigation. On the other hand, it is also because of the complexity of the subject itself. Therefore, according to what mentioned above, there is a very strong practical significance for the investigation of the status of English teachers’mental health.In this study, inspired by the theory of teachers’professional development,68English teachers are randomly selected as the subjects. All these subjects, who graduated two years ago, had majored in English education in the College of Foreign Studies of Guangxi Normal University. The data and information for the study are collected in two ways, namely, questionnaires and structured interviews, for the purpose of gaining both quantitative and qualitative information to understand the mental health status of English teachers. Furthermore, it is of great help for a deep-seated and multi-angle analysis if trying to find the main problems and then proposing the related countermeasures.After analyzing the data and information of SCL-90and interview through SPSS software and percentage frequency, the preliminary results show that (1) in self-assessment scores for mental health problems of the subjects (English teachers in middle schools) is significantly higher than that of other adult norms, accounting for46.42%;(2) the living and working conditions are the major factors that have induced the mental health problems for middle school English teachers, especially for those who have got500-1000Yuan income monthly;(3) mental health problems are mainly indicated as interpersonal sensitivity, depression, hostility, terror, paranoia and focus on the performance of poor sleep and unhealthy eating habits.Based on the results of the investigation and the related theories, the suggestions are proposed respectively.(1) Schools are supposed to take concerns for the life and career of the English teachers, especially those young teachers, in order to help them establish clear professional ethics, so that they will gradually come to realize the noble of teaching profession.(2) English teachers should make a clear plan for their professional development and establish a firm direction of struggle, thus, they will take up the social responsibility, gradually and successfully.(3) English teachers, especially young English teachers, have to learn how to face and deal with the social reality properly; with enhancing the sense of reality, moreover, they are expected to develop a positive self-awareness by controlling self-regulated emotions and self-evaluation, so as to maintain a peaceful mentality.