The survey results indicated that the prevalence of anxiety among university teachers during the COVID-19 epidemic. Of the 10,302 teachers remaining in the final analysis,
the 4,542(40.0%) university teachers reported anxiety symptoms. To curb the epidemic, home confinement and school closures were implemented nationwide in China. Social isolation, fear and helpless put a huge psychological burden on the population, especially those who lost family members due to the pandemic12,17. Researches showed that negative psychological emotions such as stress and anxiety will have an impact on teachers' health17,18. This kind of bad psychological state will lead to the decrease of their work enthusiasm, the decline of teaching quality18. At the same time, anxiety, depression is also an important cause of death of teachers19. The prevalence of teaches' anxiety in our study is higher than other investigations in China (13.67%)20. This difference may be attributed to that the subjects of this study were limited to university teachers. University teacher not only undertakes the task of teaching, but also plays the role of researcher21. Due to the lack of necessary material and human resources support, many university teachers can't continue their research projects, so anxiety symptoms are more common in this population. However, it is also possible that high rates of anxiety symptoms were prevalent among university teachers even before the epidemic. Therefore, it is very necessary to carry out a comprehensive investigation and intervention on the mental health of the university teachers.
This study we found that sociodemographic factors such as age, gender, and economic status were associated with anxiety. As in previous studies, older age and women have been identified as risk factors for mental health problems20,22. The study suggested that the possible mechanisms contain both physical and psychological components. Influenced by sex chromosome genes and female psychological characteristics, women will show more self-blame in stressful events, tend to avoidance, depression and other negative coping methods, and it is closely related to the increase of female anxiety symptoms23. Recent research confirms that social networks can influence mental health in older adults. Older people often struggle to reap the benefits of electronic social networks, which tend to be face-to-face. Because COVID-19 elderly people are isolated at home for a long time, it is difficult to communicate with relatives and friends face to face, so social isolation aggravates the anxiety symptoms of elderly people24. In addition, studies have shown that COVID-19 exacerbated the job instability of teachers and increased the rate of layoffs, which undoubtedly increased the economic pressure on teachers21,25. This phenomenon was also reflected in our study that teachers with bad economic status also have a higher detection rate of anxiety symptoms. Therefore, our study may provide clues to the prevalence of anxiety and the factors that influence it. However, further expansion of our study is needed to assess the stability and reliability of our results.
We found it noteworthy that teacher views on returning to school seem to be a new focus for teachers' anxiety symptoms. Teachers who were neutral and did not support returning to school had a lower prevalence of anxiety symptoms than those who were supportive. Teachers also play parents role, so they face a double return-to-school situation. Research shows that return-to-school, as a‘disruptive event’, can cause maladjustment in some people and exacerbate their anxiety symptoms26. At the same time, other studies have shown that teachers who teach face-to-face are about roughly twice infection risk of those who teach online. This will increase the risk of infection in the family27,28. These reasons may lead to big pressure on teachers in the return-to-school. It was also confirmed in our study: fair, small or no pressure was a protective factor for anxiety among university teachers. Pressure may undermine teachers' support for a neutral return-to-school attitude. Out of the above considerations, the neutral, non-supportive attitude may make university teachers more prone to anxiety, especially for teachers who do not support return to school.
For a long time, social support researches on mental health have not always yielded consistent results29,30. However, many scholars generally regard social support as a protective factor of mental health, and the level of social support is negatively correlated with anxiety symptoms29. Our findings differ from this view, which might be explained by the following reasons: 1) The protective effect of perceived social support on university teachers was weak; 2) In this study, the number of teachers with high level of perceived social support is very small, and more than half of the teachers are in low level of social support, so it is necessary to increase the sample size to confirm the accuracy of the research conclusion.
Strengths and limitations
The study has several advantages. First, to our knowledge, this is the largest survey of the mental health of university teachers conducted during the COVID-19. In addition, this study shows that nearly half of university teachers have mental health problems. The results of this study can provide valuable reference for the prevention of psychological problems among teachers in other regions and countries, especially those regions where schools are still closed.
Meanwhile, our study has several limitations. First, it was a cross-sectional study and lacked longitudinal follow-up. As the epidemic continues to spread and the duration of school closures increases, the anxiety symptoms among teachers are likely to become more severe. Therefore, the long-term psychological effects of teachers deserve further investigation. Second, this study was unable to distinguish between preexisting anxiety symptoms and new symptoms. Third, the status of anxiety symptoms was based on respondents' self-reports rather than clinical diagnosis.