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Prevalence of exhaustion symptoms and associations with school level, length of work experience and gender: a nationwide cross-sectional study of Swedish principals

BACKGROUND: While poor mental health and psychiatric disorders attributed to stressful work conditions are a public health concern in many countries, the health consequences of the occupational stress experienced by school principals is an understudied issue. Although current data is lacking, some r...

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Autores principales: Persson, Roger, Leo, Ulf, Arvidsson, Inger, Håkansson, Carita, Nilsson, Kerstin, Österberg, Kai
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7874991/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33568106
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-10317-7
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author Persson, Roger
Leo, Ulf
Arvidsson, Inger
Håkansson, Carita
Nilsson, Kerstin
Österberg, Kai
author_facet Persson, Roger
Leo, Ulf
Arvidsson, Inger
Håkansson, Carita
Nilsson, Kerstin
Österberg, Kai
author_sort Persson, Roger
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: While poor mental health and psychiatric disorders attributed to stressful work conditions are a public health concern in many countries, the health consequences of the occupational stress experienced by school principals is an understudied issue. Although current data is lacking, some research suggests that principals have a stressful work situation that eventually may lead to burnout and exhaustion disorder, thus negatively affecting the ability of principals to function as leaders. To gauge the situation in Sweden, and as a basis for future preventive actions, we examined to what extent principals displayed signs of exhaustion and whether the prevalence rates of exhaustion differed across school levels, length of work experience as a principal, and gender. METHODS: Principals (N = 2219; mean age 49 years [SD 7 years]; 78% women) working at least 50% in pre-schools, compulsory schools, upper secondary schools or adult education completed a cross-sectional web survey entailing two validated inventories: The Karolinska Exhaustion Disorder Scale (KEDS) and the Lund University Checklist for Incipient Exhaustion (LUCIE). Data was analysed using traditional non-parametric methods. Gender stratification achieved covariate balance when analysing school level and length of work experience. RESULTS: Altogether, 29.0% of the principals met the exhaustion criteria in KEDS. The prevalence rates for the four LUCIE-steps of increasing signs of exhaustion were: no signs of stress, 48.8%; weak signs of stress, 25.6%; clear signs of stress but no exhaustion, 15.4%; possible exhaustion disorder, 10.2%. Compared with male principals, female principals reported more signs of possible exhaustion disorder in both LUCIE and KEDS. School level was not associated with reports of exhaustion symptoms in neither LUCIE nor KEDS. Among male principals, length of work experience was associated with exhaustion symptoms in KEDS. CONCLUSIONS: A large group of Swedish principals working in pre-schools, compulsory schools, upper secondary schools or adult education displayed a symptomatology of signs of exhaustion that if sustained might lead to poor health. This observation suggests that education authorities, or other relevant stakeholders, ought to take some form of preventive action. However, effective combinations of individual, group, organisational, and/or societal preventive activities remain to be identified and tested.
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spelling pubmed-78749912021-02-11 Prevalence of exhaustion symptoms and associations with school level, length of work experience and gender: a nationwide cross-sectional study of Swedish principals Persson, Roger Leo, Ulf Arvidsson, Inger Håkansson, Carita Nilsson, Kerstin Österberg, Kai BMC Public Health Research Article BACKGROUND: While poor mental health and psychiatric disorders attributed to stressful work conditions are a public health concern in many countries, the health consequences of the occupational stress experienced by school principals is an understudied issue. Although current data is lacking, some research suggests that principals have a stressful work situation that eventually may lead to burnout and exhaustion disorder, thus negatively affecting the ability of principals to function as leaders. To gauge the situation in Sweden, and as a basis for future preventive actions, we examined to what extent principals displayed signs of exhaustion and whether the prevalence rates of exhaustion differed across school levels, length of work experience as a principal, and gender. METHODS: Principals (N = 2219; mean age 49 years [SD 7 years]; 78% women) working at least 50% in pre-schools, compulsory schools, upper secondary schools or adult education completed a cross-sectional web survey entailing two validated inventories: The Karolinska Exhaustion Disorder Scale (KEDS) and the Lund University Checklist for Incipient Exhaustion (LUCIE). Data was analysed using traditional non-parametric methods. Gender stratification achieved covariate balance when analysing school level and length of work experience. RESULTS: Altogether, 29.0% of the principals met the exhaustion criteria in KEDS. The prevalence rates for the four LUCIE-steps of increasing signs of exhaustion were: no signs of stress, 48.8%; weak signs of stress, 25.6%; clear signs of stress but no exhaustion, 15.4%; possible exhaustion disorder, 10.2%. Compared with male principals, female principals reported more signs of possible exhaustion disorder in both LUCIE and KEDS. School level was not associated with reports of exhaustion symptoms in neither LUCIE nor KEDS. Among male principals, length of work experience was associated with exhaustion symptoms in KEDS. CONCLUSIONS: A large group of Swedish principals working in pre-schools, compulsory schools, upper secondary schools or adult education displayed a symptomatology of signs of exhaustion that if sustained might lead to poor health. This observation suggests that education authorities, or other relevant stakeholders, ought to take some form of preventive action. However, effective combinations of individual, group, organisational, and/or societal preventive activities remain to be identified and tested. BioMed Central 2021-02-10 /pmc/articles/PMC7874991/ /pubmed/33568106 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-10317-7 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research Article
Persson, Roger
Leo, Ulf
Arvidsson, Inger
Håkansson, Carita
Nilsson, Kerstin
Österberg, Kai
Prevalence of exhaustion symptoms and associations with school level, length of work experience and gender: a nationwide cross-sectional study of Swedish principals
title Prevalence of exhaustion symptoms and associations with school level, length of work experience and gender: a nationwide cross-sectional study of Swedish principals
title_full Prevalence of exhaustion symptoms and associations with school level, length of work experience and gender: a nationwide cross-sectional study of Swedish principals
title_fullStr Prevalence of exhaustion symptoms and associations with school level, length of work experience and gender: a nationwide cross-sectional study of Swedish principals
title_full_unstemmed Prevalence of exhaustion symptoms and associations with school level, length of work experience and gender: a nationwide cross-sectional study of Swedish principals
title_short Prevalence of exhaustion symptoms and associations with school level, length of work experience and gender: a nationwide cross-sectional study of Swedish principals
title_sort prevalence of exhaustion symptoms and associations with school level, length of work experience and gender: a nationwide cross-sectional study of swedish principals
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7874991/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33568106
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-10317-7
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