In interviews with Yahoo Lifestyle, more than a dozen teachers across the U.S. discussed how increasing demands of teaching have negatively affected their me...
After 24 years of teaching at public schools in Louisiana, Holly Beth says she often felt “defeated” before she entered the school doors. Nonetheless, like clockwork, she would eat, sleep and repeat — until she felt the the emotional shift that changed everything.
Research has shown that the problem is widespread — and, in some places, getting worse. A 2015 survey by the American Federation of Teachers found that 34 percent of teachers cited a decline in their mental health . Two years later, that number jumped to 58 percent. Keith Herman, a University of Missouri professor, authored a 2017 study which found that 93 percent of elementary school teachers report experiencing a high-stress level.
“There are teachers that don’t know how to give up and will fight to the bitter end… It’s to our detriment,” says a San Diego educator who takes Xanax for panic attacks . “We’re trying to survive a career that is destroying us.” Victoria Wang, a teacher in the Austin, Tex., KIPP charter school system, says she reached her breaking point when she cried in front of her kindergarten students halfway through her second year of teaching. Overwhelmed with the increasing demands of teaching, it wasn’t the first — or last — time she cried.
“I think the idea of teaching — in an ideal day in the profession of teaching — is what held back a lot of my depressive and suicidal thoughts,” Wang tells Yahoo Lifestyle. “But the reality of teaching — feeling like you're never enough, feeling like there's always more to do, feeling like you're failing all the time — that did crack it open a little bit. On the rough days, I would feel suicidal again.
For former Greenville, S.C., English teacher Vance Jenkins, the dread of having to go to the classroom kept him up through all hours of the night. After seeking professional help for his insomnia in 2016, Jenkins started going to therapy, taking Ambien to sleep at night and Klonopin and Prozac to treat his diagnosed anxiety and situational depression.
“Those poor kids spend an hour not learning anything at school, or they stay in the room and I have to chance the fact that they could get hurt,” says Lewellen about the violent outbreaks. “I shouldn't have to worry about that at my job.”
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