Early Childhood Teachers’ Wellbeing and Mental Health During the COVID 19 Pandemic – Kosovo Case
Keywords:
COVID 19, Kosovo, Mental Health, Preschool educator, WellbeingAbstract
Faced with the situation of COVID-19, preschool teachers’ mental health was threatened. The aim of the study was to discover the presence of anxiety, depression and mental wellbeing in preschool teachers and to understand the possible associations with sociodemographic variables. This study was conducted with 203 female preschool teachers in Kosovo, with the mean age 37.08 (SD = 10.31) and teaching experience MA = 10.40; SD = 9.15. Preschool teachers voluntarily completed the WHO (five) Well-Being Index, Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7, Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) and a sociodemographic survey through a web-based Google form. Descriptive, the comparison and the correlation of variables was determined. Three multiple standard regression analyses were run to predict respectively mental wellbeing, anxiety and depression. Around half of the preschool teacher (52.7%) reported scores falling within moderate to severe levels for anxiety, while 43.9% of them reported mild to severe level of depression. We found significant difference in depression levels between preschool teachers living in the city, who showed higher values (p = .005). Preschool teachers working in public institutions had higher mental wellbeing scores than those working in non-public institutions (p = .013). Only anxiety significantly predicted the wellbeing contributing to approximately 34.3 of the variances (p = .000). The situation with Covid-19 has increased anxiety, depression levels and putting to the risk the wellbeing of preschool teacher. In these really challenging times, preschool educators welcome professional assistance for their mental health and it is the obligation of the institutions to provide this.
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