The relationship between high school teachers' mental health literacy and their beliefs on mental disease and its affecting factors

The aim of the study is to examine the relationship between teachers' mental health literacy and their level of belief in mental illness and to determine the factors affecting mental health literacy. The research is a cross-sectional, relationship-seeking survey study. It was held between 06 July 2021 and 28 January 2022 with the participation of 218 teachers working in state high schools in the city center of Bolu. Personal Information Form, Mental Health Literacy Scale and Beliefs Regarding Mental Illness Scale were used to collect data. Data were evaluated with Mann Whitney U, Kruskal Wallis Test and Spearman correlation analysis. The average age of the participants in the study is 40.44±7.55 (25-57) years, 56.9% of them are women and they have been working as teachers for an average of 16 years. Only 6.4% have received training in the field of mental health, 20.6% have experience in psychiatric treatment, 78.0% He stated that he had encountered an individual with a mental illness. The median of the mental health literacy total score was 91, the mean was 92.16±9.06 (70-121), the median of the beliefs about mental illness was 56.5, the mean was 53.52±18.52 (3-105). It was found that those who were married, had good economic status, and those who received mental health education had higher mental health literacy mean scores (p<0.05). Age of teachers (r=15; p<0.05) and working time in the profession (r=14; p<0.05) and mental health literacy sub-dimension of knowledge about self help/treatment interventions, a very weak positive correlation was found. A very weak positive correlation was found between the number of children and the sub dimension of mental health literacy (r=15; p<0.05) and knowledge about how to access information (r=16; p<0.05). A weak negative correlation was found between mental health literacy and having knowledge about how to access information (r=- .28; p<0.05) and knowledge about accessing professional help (r=-.15; p<0.05).