ARE TEACHERS' MENTAL HEALTH AT RISK? WHAT CAN BE DONE?

Teachers are expected to and do fulfil various types of roles in their profession. They are expected to be educators, education specialists, nurses, psychologists, social workers, guidance counsellors, priests and preachers, intermediaries and so on; the list is quite extensive.

As a teacher myself we do perform these tasks and often go beyond the call of duties all for the sake of our learners. We are expected to be superhuman. In the mist of everything, we and many others outside our profession tend to forget that we are merely human. There's only so such we can take until we reach a breaking point. When we snap, we snap.
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We deal with stubborn parents and children, SGB members, district officials, HODs and third party individuals and organisations. In each situation we are expected to behave professionally with understanding and humility. A single utterance out of tune with these principles will result in unpleasant consequences.

The amount of emotions, repressed feelings of frustrations and anger teachers keep bottled up inside for years on end results in desire psycho-emotional consequences. They end up depressed and anxiety is the order of the day. Teaching in most countries in the world is amongst the top stressful and depressing professions. Job stress is overwhelming teachers, Teaching is among the 'top three most stressed occupations

The irony of this is that after a few years in this profession teachers end up needing psychologists, doctors, priests and intermediaries in their lives and in the lives of their families. Why can't this be prevented before it starts?
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How do we remedy the situation?

Prevention is better than cure. When teachers are at the beginning of their professional careers, workshops should be held that focus solely on the mental health of the educators. These should give practical ways of preventing or at least minimizing the amount of stress that we go through each and every single day. Steps showing how to deal with external class factors should be included.

Mental health workers should be appointed for schools. These workers will deal with not only troubled, demotivated, asocial learners but also with overworked and over stressed teachers. Such counselling is imperative and should be made free to access by all.

These are but a few examples which I feel would bring a difference in our profession and enable us as teachers to be fully functional at all times with our sanity preserved and protected. There are many more online I could find but I would appreciate suggestions from my steemit community of professionals. If you have any first-hand experience in such cases and have overcome them please feel free to share with me. I am still a student of life and I am willing to learn always.