Assessment of mental health in professionals from special schools of the city of Talca, Chile

In this article we present an observational, descriptive and transversal study of mental health professionals. The Goldberg Mental Health Scale (1997), the Maslach and Jackson Burnout Inventory (1997), and the Holmes and Rahe Questionnaire of Psychosocial Stress (1967) were administered to a sample of 78 workers of special schools from the Talca (Chile) both from teaching and non-teaching staff. The results show that nearly half of the professionals present certain levels of anxiety, stress, and depression and there are not differences between the teaching and non-teaching staff, men and women, nor are results associated to marital status. However, a significant difference was observed between the variables “age” and “years of service”. We concluded that the outcomes from this study are in accordance with others studies about mental health vulnerability in teachers, but also contribute with data concerning the fact that this characteristics are observed as well in the non-teaching staff, therefore interventions should consider the whole educational community.