Baramulla, July 15: Aarifeen School of Excellence in collaboration with child guidance and wellbeing centre Institute of mental health and neurosciences, Kashmir Wednesday organised a webinar on ‘Stress Management Among Teachers’.
On the occasion, Waseem Rashid Kakroo, child and adolescent mental health counsellor discussed how covid 19 pandemic has affected the mental health of teachers and how the teachers can deal with the situation in a proper way.
“The job of teachers was stressful even before the pandemic but with the closure of schools, long online working hours, struggle to engage students remotely has made this job even more stressful”, Rashid said.
Mr. Waseem, who was the main resource person, said that a recent study done in September 2020, has pointed out that during lockdown, teachers have suffered stress from having to adapt (in record time) in order to provide online classes. This stress has often been accompanied by symptoms of anxiety, depression, and sleep disturbance as a consequence of the increased workload resulting from home teaching.
“A study carried out in three cities in China during the early months of the pandemic assessed the prevalence of anxiety among teachers and found a prevalence of 13.67%, with women being more anxious than men and the older ones being more symptomatic.Another study conducted in March 2020, also in China showed that the prevalence of stress symptoms in teachers was 9.1% and that it was important to support them psychologically,” he added.
A study in 2018, found that working from home using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) such as zoom, Google meet etc. can create feelings of tension, anxiety, exhaustion, and decreased job satisfaction, and in times of a pandemic these were the only tools that were available to teachers.
“It is important to protect the emotional/psychological health of teachers since teacher-student relationships are also stressors for the student, and the teacher’s behavior predicts the emotional well-being and commitment of the students, which are also important factors for reducing their stress levels,” he added.
Mr. Kakroo advised the teachers to stay healthy and active by engaging in any physical activity for around 30 minutes on a daily basis.
“Stay away from rumors and misinformation about covid 19 breakout, check facts, improve your sleep, be grateful and realistic, try relaxation activities and do physical activities on a daily basis. These things will help you a lot in reducing the stress level,” Waseem added.
A question answer session was held at the end of the webinar, wherein the audience posed several questions to the resource person.
Ms Sandra Mak, Coordinator Aarifeen School of Excellence thanked the guest speaker for the informative session and staffers for participating in the webinar and assured that such programs will be held in near future also for the betterment of ASE staffers.
