Depression and occupational stress in Japanese school principals and vice-principals

Teaching is one of the most stressful occupations. Over the last decade, about 5000 Japanese public school teachers per year have taken sick leave due to a mental illness. School principals and vice principals also face occupational stress, although few studies have examined occupational stress in these groups.

To clarify the relationship between occupational stress, role problems and depressive symptoms among school principals and vice principals in Japan.

We conducted a cross-sectional study in 2013 with data from 262 principals and 268 vice principals in Japan. We used the Japanese version of Zung's Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS) to evaluate depressive symptoms and the Generic Job Stress Questionnaire to evaluate occupational stress and social support. We categorized SDS scores above 49 as indicating depression. We examined the relationship between depressive symptoms and perceived occupational stress using stepwise forward multivariate logistic regression analyses.

Thirty-six (14%) principals and 81 (30%) vice-principals were categorized into the depressive group. Quantitative workload (odds ratio, OR = 6.62 [2.63-16.70]) and role ambiguity (OR = 4.94[1.57-15.53]) were associated with higher depressive scores in principals. Social support from supervisors (OR = 4.14 [1.97-8.68]) and role ambiguity (OR = 9.71 [4.08-23.14]) were associated with higher depressive scores in vice-principals.

Clarifying job roles for principals and vice-principals, reducing quantitative workload for principals and increasing supervisory support for vice-principals may be important for mitigating depression for school principals and vice-principals in Japan.