Levels of anxiety and depression among early childhood education and primary education teachers

Abstract Teaching nowadays has become a profession, which leads to illness. Taking this aspect into consideration, the aim of this article is to verify teachers’ levels of anxiety and depression and their possible association to the level of satisfaction at work and factual data such as age, educational level and religiousness. To do so, 150 professionals teachers, who taught Public Early Years Education and Primary Education levels in a school in the state of São Paulo, were given a questionnaire, based on the Beck Scales (depression and anxiety) on the factual data and work satisfaction and it could be seen that 50% of the subjects presented levels of anxiety and/or depression which were harmful to the educational act. Thus it was possible to conclude that it is necessary to promote educational policies that take teachers’ mental health into account.