Last week, Federal Education Minister, Dan Tehan met with school representatives about a national strategy to address the physical and verbal abuse that many educators endure.
For now, the issue of how to best support educators’ mental health remains an issue of contention, but the efforts universities to develop research and initiatives to improve mental health persist.
For example, UNSW’s Strategic Hires and Retention Pathways Professor Deborah Lupton recently joined the Governing Health Futures 2030: Growing up in the Digital World Commission to look into how digitalisation impacts health and wellbeing.
Professor Lupton hoped that the Commission, which looks into how digitalisation affects countries with high youth populations, can help shed light on the benefits and consequences of digital health technologies.
“The expansion of digital technologies for disseminating health and medical information, promoting health and supporting self-care has contributed to people’s knowledge about health and allowed them to share their experiences and knowledge with peers,” she said.
“This should include a strong focus on personal data privacy and security issues, and the ethics of collecting and using health data.”
In the University of Sunshine Coast (USC), an undergraduate will be awarded the Chancellor’s Medal – the highest accolade for graduating students – for her mental health as well as women’s body image advocacies.
Amy de Wet, a psychology major, was lauded for her active role in fostering a forum and environment for students to speak about their mental health in USC. de Wet also volunteers off campus to help children with mental health issues.
Flinders University, too, is ramping up its efforts to improve mental health.
Last June, the University announced it will be building the largest integrated health and education precinct in South Australia at its Flinders Village property.
The centre, due to open in 2020, will house a health research facility and transitional health accommodation among other facilities. In its first stage alone, the facility is set to focus on mental health, combating infectious diseases and improving personalised health delivery for its students living on campus.
But what about the teachers?
Educators have to work on their self-worth which can lead to better self-care routines, according to Thea O’Connor, a health and productivity writer, in an article published in QLD Teachers’ Journal.
Simply put, teachers would have to learn how to value themselves for what they can do without getting praises from others.
“If you don’t truly value and appreciate yourself, you will be dependent on getting external validation from others to feel good about yourself,” O’Connor writes.
“In contrast, when you really connect with your essence and all the valuable qualities you bring to the world every day, you have every reason to want to protect these precious attributes that only you can bring.”
As a start, O’Connor suggests that teachers do the following:
- Write down your own qualities that you appreciate
- Focus on how you carry yourself on and off work
- Ask yourself if you have the qualities your family, workplace and community needs
- Ask yourself how these qualities will be affected if you don’t take care of yourself
- What happens to your good qualities when you’re tired
A few minutes spared for introspection can help teachers keep not only their physical health, but also their mental health and good qualities, in check.
“Build self-care on a foundation of self-worth: on waking, start the day by bringing awareness to the qualities you know you will bring to your day, and take a moment to appreciate this about yourself,” O’Connor writes.
“Then let every act of self-care, even tiny ones like adjusting your posture or giving yourself enough time to eat lunch, be in honour of these wonderful attributes you bring.”