Depressão em professores: um estudo sobre fatores de adoecimento e estratégias de enfrentamento

Abstract

Depressive disorder is one of the most expressive causes of absence from work, considered by the WHO as the second largest disabling factor for work in the world. Among the workers affected by this disorder, teachers stand out, with depression rates of approximately 17% among Brazilian teachers, while the depression rate for the general population is 4.4%. The present study aimed to describe work-related factors that teachers, on leave due to depression, attribute to their illness process and which are the coping strategies used by them. Behavior Analysis is the psychology approach that guided the research in this investigative process, through the methodology of document analysis and a questionnaire applied to teachers, from January 2016 to December 2021, identifying and describing environmental factors and common contingencies. Therefore, a questionnaire was applied to 12 teachers who had already taken sick leave due to a diagnosis of depression, among the 20 public schools in the city of Vilhena, Rondônia. Teachers pointed out the lack of equipment and teaching resources (58.3%), the excess workload (41.7%), with an average of 58.58 hours/week and the educational policy of devaluation of teaching work (33 .3%) as work factors that contributed to depression. Most teachers (91%) reported performing psychotherapy; 75% of the participants said they had had a psychiatric consultation and used medication. The performance of joint psychological and psychiatric treatment was reported by 58.3% of the participants. A mong those surveyed, half had relapses with new episodes of depression. These data corroborate those of previous research and the compendium of psychiatry (Kaplan & Sadock, 2017). Additionally, they expand the results of other studies insofar as there are no previous studies on depression in teachers in the studied municipality.