On a teacher's suicide: three things we need to talk about

[Sammyboy RSS Feed]

An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:



Last night, I found out about a teacher in Singapore who was apparently under so much stress that she slit her wrists and jumped from the 13th floor, killing herself. Suicide and psychological distress continue to be problems in Singapore, with the Samaritans of Singapore (SOS) reporting 422 suicides in 2013, with young people below the age of 30 making up about a hundred cases (24%).

If you hate reading long articles and don’t want to continue reading to the end, just take away one thought from this article: All of us suffer. Some of us are anxious, depressed, and even suicidal. Let’s be kind to one another.

While mental health issues have already filled numerous bookshelves, it really doesn’t get much more complicated than that. Human suffering is a constant, and we all have the seeds of compassion within us to help those who suffer. If any of us sees a child on the verge of drowning, very few of us would hesitate to help.

1. Psychological distress

Let us all admit it now: all of us suffer. Sometimes it may not seem that way, given all the shiny, happy people we see on Instagram and Facebook. But of course, we’re all very eager the positive highlights of our lives, and few of us actually reveal the depths of our psychological distress online.

When it comes to teachers in Singapore, at least we have hard numbers to go by, to see how much some of our teachers may be suffering (from the TALIS survey, see also the Mothership summary):

Teachers here work about 56 hours a week — that’s 10 hours per day from Monday to Friday, with 6 hours to split between Saturdays and Sundays.

Moreover, 46% of our teachers wonder if it would have been better to choose another job — almost one out of two teachers teaching our children wonder if they screwed up when they signed that teaching contract.

With such long working hours and the widespread feeling of regret (“this might be the wrong job for me“), it really would not be surprising to find out that some of our teachers suffer from depression and anxiety disorders, which are common ailments in Singapore anyway. Our education system doesn’t only result in students that are stressed out, even our teachers are suffering.

More at On a teacher's suicide: three things we need to talk about (suicide solution: psychological distress, mental illness stigma, and inequality)


Click here to view the whole thread at www.sammyboy.com.