Substance Abuse and Teacher Stress

Abstract

On-the-job stress was examined in relationship with the strength of need to use and the frequency of use of over-the-counter (OTC) and prescription (P) drugs and alcohol (A), across five teacher samples ( N = 1788). The Total Strength and Total Frequency Scores of the Teacher Stress Inventory (TSI) were used to assess stress levels. It was determined that: 1) high stress frequencies were significantly related to the frequent use of OTC, P, and A substances, 2) high stress strengths were significantly related to perceptions of the strong need to use such substances; 3) 6 percent to 11 percent of the teachers reported a great-to-major need to use chemical substances to manage stress, while 3 percent to 11 percent reported actually making use of these on a near-daily or daily basis; 4) the Total Stress Frequency can be used to predict the frequency of substance use; and 5) both the Total Frequency and Total Strength measures can be used to predict the degree of need to use stress-buffering substances.