I have to get back to this topic. Yesterday was the venue and date for the workshop which was well attended by approx. 500 teachers and medical doctors. It was also well attended by the German press hence I am looking forward for the "releases" early next week.
About 6 keynote speakers were there, and the initial "lectures" were related to topics such as "School risk factors in the psychological (ill) health development of children", "Perfectionism until exhaustion Determinants andsymptoms and treatment of psychosomatic disorders by teachers", and "The teaching colleagues as a source of support or stress in the social structure of teaching establishments." My contribution at the end was "What constitutes good teaching." What was immediately apparent was at the end of the day the majority of those participants remaining for the forum debate were the teachers (c. 60%) of audience. Statistics for Germany show that for several Federal States around 5% of teachers work until retirement (65 years), the majority having to take out early retirement. Teachers are "overproportionately" represented in psychotherapy treatment. The rate of absenteeism is 10% and they are particularly susceptible to the risks of psychosomatic disorders (6 times incidence rate of most other professions).

My questions? 1. I wonder whether this finding is generalisable to other countries? High prevalence of mental ill-health among the teaching profession.
2. Why are helping profesionals such as teachers so susceptible to psychological disorders?
and perhaps most importantly from the perspective of the audience is
3. What can we do about it? Offering individual psychotherapy would not be deemed the best solution. They felt a more global solution is required.
4. The teachers had heard the impressive figures and statistics of academics but wanted concrete guidance in the implications for their daily work and social and health policy making. Any suggestions would be helpful.

For me there was a personal satisfaction in the fact that 30 years after British primary, secondary and tertiary education where I had felt the personal negative repercussions of some very "inferior" teaching personalities, I realised that these people themselves
not only their students, were very "susceptible" individuals. If Id have know that as a child it would have probably helped! It was interesting that among the emotionally burned out teacher personality, it was the perfectionistic and dediacted teacher who were most prone to the negative effects of stress.